Characterising Dark Matter-induced neutrino potentials

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dark matter can influence neutrino propagation by deriving a general, model-independent potential, revealing that only ultra-light scalar dark matter significantly affects neutrino oscillations.

Contribution

The authors derive a comprehensive, model-independent expression for dark matter-induced neutrino potentials applicable to any dark matter mass and spin.

Findings

Ultra-light scalar dark matter can impact neutrino oscillations.

The potential is derived using on-shell techniques, ensuring model independence.

Only specific dark matter types are relevant for phenomenology.

Abstract

In this paper we explore interactions between neutrinos and Dark Matter. In particular, we study how the propagation of astrophysical neutrinos can be modified by computing the most general potential generated by the galactic DM background. We use on-shell techniques to compute this potential in a completely model independent way and obtain an expression valid for any Dark Matter mass and spin. Afterwards, we use this expression to analyse under what circumstances such potential can be important at the phenomenological level, and we find that under some assumptions only ultra light scalar Dark Matter could be of any relevance to oscillation experiments.