A new Direct Detection Strategy for the Cosmic Neutrino Background

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method for detecting the cosmic neutrino background by leveraging cosmic ray-boosted neutrinos and their scattering in condensed matter, offering a complementary approach to traditional techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a new detection strategy based on boosted CNB spectrum and dielectric response, enabling potential observation or constraint of neutrino self-interactions.

Findings

Potential detection of CNB with realistic exposure

Strong constraints on neutrino self-interaction possible

Analysis of background effects from dark matter

Abstract

The direct detection of cosmic neutrino background (CNB) has been a longstanding challenge in particle physics, due to its low number density and tiny neutrino masses. In this work, we consider the spectrum of the CNB boosted by cosmic rays via the neutrino self-interaction, and calculate the event rate of the boosted CNB-plasmon scattering in term of the dielectric response, which accounts for in-medium screening effect of a condensed matter target. This can be taken as the new direct detection strategy for the CNB in complementary to the traditional one, which captures the CNB on a $\beta$-unstable nucleus. Our result shows that one can either see the event of the CNB for the exposure of per kg$\cdot$year, or puts a strong constraint on the neutrino self-interaction. We further explore the background induced by the sub-MeV dark matter and the boosted super-light dark matter.