Oscillations of sterile neutrinos from dark matter decay eliminates the IceCube-Fermi tension

TL;DR

This paper proposes that decaying dark matter into sterile neutrinos, which oscillate into active neutrinos, can explain the observed neutrino flux bump and resolve the tension between IceCube and Fermi data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dark matter decay model involving sterile neutrinos to account for the cosmic neutrino spectrum features.

Findings

Dark matter decay into sterile neutrinos can produce the observed neutrino bump.

Oscillations of sterile into active neutrinos explain the IceCube-Fermi tension.

The model offers an alternative to hidden cosmic-ray accelerators.

Abstract

IceCube has observed a flux of cosmic neutrinos, with a "bump" in the energy range $10 \lesssim E/{\rm TeV} \lesssim 100$ that creates a $3\sigma$ tension with gamma-ray data from the Fermi satellite. This has been interpreted as evidence for a population of hidden cosmic-ray accelerators. We propose an alternative explanation of this conundrum on the basis of cold dark matter which decays into sterile neutrinos that after oscillations produce the bump in the cosmic neutrino spectrum.