# Imaging Galactic Dark Matter with High-Energy Cosmic Neutrinos

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that high-energy cosmic neutrinos detected by IceCube can be used to investigate neutrino-dark matter interactions, revealing potential new physics beyond current cosmological constraints.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel method using IceCube neutrino data to probe dark matter-neutrino interactions, surpassing existing cosmological limits.

## Key findings

- IceCube can constrain dark matter-neutrino interaction parameters.
- Galactic dark matter influences neutrino flux and distribution.
- Results suggest potential for new physics detection.

## Abstract

We show that the high-energy cosmic neutrinos seen by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory can be used to probe interactions between neutrinos and the dark sector that cannot be reached by current cosmological methods. The origin of the observed neutrinos is still unknown, and their arrival directions are compatible with an isotropic distribution. This observation, together with dedicated studies of Galactic plane correlations, suggest a predominantly extragalactic origin. Interactions between this isotropic extragalactic flux and the dense dark matter (DM) bulge of the Milky Way would thus lead to an observable imprint on the distribution, which would be seen by IceCube as 1) slightly suppressed fluxes at energies below a PeV and 2) a deficit of events in the direction of the Galactic center. We perform an extended unbinned likelihood analysis using the four-year high-energy starting event dataset to constrain the strength of DM-neutrino interactions for two model classes. We find that, in spite of low statistics, IceCube can probe regions of the parameter space inaccessible to current cosmological methods.