Cosmogenic neutrinos as probes of new physics

Abstract

The scattering of extremely energetic cosmic rays with both cosmic microwave background and extragalactic background light, can produce $\mathcal{O}(10^{18} \,{\rm eV})$ neutrinos, known as cosmogenic neutrinos. These neutrinos are the only messengers from the extreme cosmic accelerators that can reveal the origin of the most energetic cosmic rays. Consequently, much effort is being devoted to achieving their detection. In particular, the GRAND project aims to observe the $ν_τ$ and $\bar ν_τ$ components of the cosmogenic neutrino flux in the near future using radio antennas. In this work, we investigate how the detection of cosmogenic neutrinos by GRAND can be used to probe beyond the Standard Model physics. We identify three well-motivated scenarios which induce distinct features in the cosmogenic neutrino spectrum at Earth: neutrino self-interactions mediated by a light scalar ($ν$SI), pseudo-Dirac neutrinos (PD$ν$) and neutrinos scattering on ultra-light Dark Matter ($ν$DM). We show these scenarios can be tested by GRAND, using 10 years of cosmogenic neutrino data, in a region of parameter space complementary to current experiments. For the $ν$SI model,, we find that GRAND can constrain the coupling to $ν_τ$ in the range [$10^{-2},10^{-1}$] for a scalar with mass in the range 0.1 to 1 GeV. For PD$ν$, we find that GRAND is sensitive to sterile-active mass squared splitting in the range [$10^{-15},10^{-13}$] ${\rm eV}^2$. Finally, for the $ν$DM model, assuming a heavy mediator, GRAND can do substantially better than the current limits from other available data. These results rely on the fact that the actual cosmogenic flux is around the corner, not far from the current IceCube limit.