- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review D

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Searching for dark matter signals with high energy astrophysical neutrinos in IceCube

Khushboo Dixit1,*, Gopolang Mohlabeng2,3,†, and Soebur Razzaque1,4,5,‡

  • *Contact author: kdixit@uj.ac.za
  • †Contact author: gmohlabe@sfu.ca
  • ‡Contact author: srazzaque@uj.ac.za
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 114, 043048 – Published 19 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9zgv-fg7g

Abstract

High-energy neutrinos provide a potentially powerful and distinctive probe for dark matter (DM)–neutrino interactions, particularly in environments with enhanced DM densities, such as the DM spikes predicted to form around supermassive black holes at the center of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Recent results by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which reported four significant AGNs, namely TXS 0506+056, NGC 1068, PKS 1424+240, and NGC 4151 as candidate neutrino sources, provide a valuable opportunity to search for signatures of these interactions. In this study, we use IceCube data to derive the most stringent constraints to date on both the energy-dependent and energy-independent DM-neutrino scattering cross sections. We perform a statistical analysis using data from individual sources as well as a combined (stacked) analysis of all four sources. Our strongest limits arise from the stacking analysis, yielding an upper bound of σ0≲8×10−39  cm2 for an energy-independent cross section and σ0≲10−39  cm2 for a linearly energy-dependent cross section, both at 90% confidence level, particularly in scenarios involving the adiabatic growth of black holes.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (85)

  1. Gianfranco Bertone and Dan Hooper, History of dark matter, Rev. Mod. Phys. 90, 045002 (2018).
  2. Marco Cirelli, Alessandro Strumia, and Jure Zupan, Dark matter, SciPost Phys. Rev. 1 (2026), 10.21468/SciPostPhysRev.1.
  3. Carlos A. Argüelles, Ali Kheirandish, and Aaron C. Vincent, Imaging galactic dark matter with high-energy cosmic neutrinos, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 201801 (2017).
  4. Ki-Young Choi, Jongkuk Kim, and Carsten Rott, Constraining dark matter-neutrino interactions with IceCube-170922A, Phys. Rev. D 99, 083018 (2019).
  5. Deanna C. Hooper and Matteo Lucca, Hints of dark matter-neutrino interactions in Lyman-α data, Phys. Rev. D 105, 103504 (2022).
  6. James M. Cline, Shan Gao, Fangyi Guo, Zhongan Lin, Shiyan Liu, Matteo Puel, Phillip Todd, and Tianzhuo Xiao, Blazar constraints on neutrino-dark matter scattering, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 091402 (2023).
  7. James M. Cline and Matteo Puel, NGC 1068 constraints on neutrino-dark matter scattering, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 06 (2023) 004.
  8. Francesc Ferrer, Gonzalo Herrera, and Alejandro Ibarra, New constraints on the dark matter-neutrino and dark matter-photon scattering cross sections from TXS 0506+056, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 05 (2023) 057.
  9. Kohta Murase and Ian M. Shoemaker, Neutrino echoes from multimessenger transient sources, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 241102 (2019).
  10. Seth Koren, Neutrino—dark matter scattering and coincident detections of UHE neutrinos with EM sources, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 09 (2019) 013.
  11. Adam McMullen, Aaron Vincent, Carlos Arguelles, and Austin Schneider, Dark matter neutrino scattering in the galactic centre with IceCube, J. Instrum. 16, C08001 (2021).
  12. Pierre Fayet, Dan Hooper, and Gunter Sigl, Constraints on light dark matter from core-collapse supernovae, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 211302 (2006).
  13. Gianpiero Mangano, Alessandro Melchiorri, Paolo Serra, Asantha Cooray, and Marc Kamionkowski, Cosmological bounds on dark-matter-neutrino interactions, Phys. Rev. D 74, 043517 (2006).
  14. Céline Boehm, Matthew J. Dolan, and Christopher McCabe, A lower bound on the mass of cold thermal dark matter from Planck, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 08 (2013) 041.
  15. Bridget Bertoni, Seyda Ipek, David McKeen, and Ann E. Nelson, Reducing cosmological small scale structure via a large dark matter-neutrino interaction: Constraints and consequences, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2015) 170.
  16. Ryan J. Wilkinson, Celine Boehm, and Julien Lesgourgues, Constraining dark matter-neutrino interactions using the CMB and large-scale structure, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 05 (2014) 011.
  17. A. Keivani, K. Murase, M. Petropoulou, D. B. Fox, S. B. Cenko, S. Chaty, A. Coleiro, J. J. DeLaunay, S. Dimitrakoudis, P. A. Evans et al., A multimessenger picture of the flaring blazar TXS 0506+056: Implications for high-energy neutrino emission and cosmic-ray acceleration, Astrophys. J. 864, 84 (2018).
  18. Anita Reimer, Markus Boettcher, and Sara Buson, Cascading constraints from neutrino-emitting blazars: The case of TXS 0506+056, Astrophys. J. 881, 46 (2019); 899, 168(E) (2020).
  19. Xavier Rodrigues, Shan Gao, Anatoli Fedynitch, Andrea Palladino, and Walter Winter, Leptohadronic blazar models applied to the 2014–2015 Flare of TXS 0506+056, Astrophys. J. Lett. 874, L29 (2019).
  20. M. Cerruti, A. Zech, C. Boisson, G. Emery, S. Inoue, and J. P. Lenain, Leptohadronic single-zone models for the electromagnetic and neutrino emission of TXS 0506+056, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 483, L12 (2019); 502, L21(E) (2021).
  21. Yoshiyuki Inoue, Dmitry Khangulyan, Susumu Inoue, and Akihiro Doi, On high-energy particles in accretion disk coronae of supermassive black holes: Implications for MeV gamma-rays and high-energy neutrinos from AGN cores, Astrophys. J. 880, 40 (2019).
  22. Saikat Das, Soebur Razzaque, and Nayantara Gupta, Cosmogenic gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes from blazars associated with IceCube events, Astron. Astrophys. 658, L6 (2022).
  23. Saikat Das, Nayantara Gupta, and Soebur Razzaque, Implications of multiwavelength spectrum on cosmic-ray acceleration in blazar TXS 0506+056, Astron. Astrophys. 668, A146 (2022).
  24. R. Abbasi et al., Search for multi-flare neutrino emissions in 10 yr of IceCube data from a catalog of sources, Astrophys. J. Lett. 920, L45 (2021).
  25. M. G. Aartsen et al., Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A, Science 361, eaat1378 (2018).
  26. M. G. Aartsen et al., Neutrino emission from the direction of the blazar TXS 0506+056 prior to the IceCube-170922A alert, Science 361, 147 (2018).
  27. R. Abbasi, M. Ackermann, J. Adams, J. A. Aguilar, M. Ahlers, M. Ahrens, J. M. Alameddine, C. Alispach, A. A. Alves, Jr. et al. (IceCube Collaboration), Evidence for neutrino emission from the nearby active galaxy NGC 1068, Science 378, 538 (2022).
  28. R. Abbasi, M. Ackermann, J. Adams, S. K. Agarwalla, J. A. Aguilar, M. Ahlers, J. M. Alameddine, N. M. Amin, K. Andeen, C. Argüelles et al., Search for neutrino emission from hard X-ray AGN with IceCube, Astrophys. J. 981, 131 (2025).
  29. R. Abbasi et al., Search for neutrino emission from hard x-ray AGN with IceCube, Astrophys. J. 981, 131 (2025).
  30. https://dataverse.harvard.edu/.
  31. K. Dixit, L. S. Miranda, and S. Razzaque, Searching for pseudo-Dirac neutrinos from astrophysical sources in IceCube data, Eur. Phys. J. C 85, 1481 (2025).
  32. Julio F. Navarro, Carlos S. Frenk, and Simon D. M. White, The structure of cold dark matter halos, Astrophys. J. 462, 563 (1996).
  33. Andrey V. Kravtsov, Anatoly A. Klypin, and Alexei M. Khokhlov, Adaptive refinement tree: A new high resolution N body code for cosmological simulations, Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 111, 73 (1997).
  34. G. L. Bryan and M. L. Norman, Statistical properties of x-ray clusters: Analytic and numerical comparisons, Astrophys. J. 495, 80 (1998).
  35. D. N. Spergel et al., Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) three year results: Implications for cosmology, Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 170, 377 (2007).
  36. Gianfranco Gentile, Chiara Tonini, and Paolo Salucci, Lambda CDM halo density profiles: Where do actual halos converge to NFW ones?, Astron. Astrophys. 467, 925 (2007).
  37. Paolo Gondolo and Joseph Silk, Dark matter annihilation at the galactic center, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 1719 (1999).
  38. HongSheng Zhao, Analytical models for galactic nuclei, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 278, 488 (1996).
  39. Clément Stahl, Nicolas Mai, Benoit Famaey, Yohan Dubois, and Rodrigo Ibata, From inflation to dark matter halo profiles: The impact of primordial non-Gaussianities on the central density cusp, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 05 (2024) 021.
  40. David Merritt, Evolution of the dark matter distribution at the galactic center, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 201304 (2004).
  41. Oleg Y. Gnedin and Joel R. Primack, Dark matter profile in the galactic center, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 061302 (2004).
  42. David Merritt, Stefan Harfst, and Gianfranco Bertone, Collisionally regenerated dark matter structures in galactic nuclei, Phys. Rev. D 75, 043517 (2007).
  43. Stuart L. Shapiro and Douglas C. Heggie, Effect of stars on the dark matter spike around a black hole: A tale of two treatments, Phys. Rev. D 106, 043018 (2022).
  44. Eugene Vasiliev and Maxim Zelnikov, Dark matter dynamics in galactic center, Phys. Rev. D 78, 083506 (2008).
  45. Alessandro Granelli, Piero Ullio, and Jin-Wei Wang, Blazar-boosted dark matter at Super-Kamiokande, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 07 (2022) 013.
  46. Kohta Murase, Shigeo S. Kimura, and Peter Meszaros, Hidden cores of active galactic nuclei as the origin of medium-energy neutrinos: Critical tests with the MeV gamma-ray connection, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 011101 (2020).
  47. Yoshiyuki Inoue, Dmitry Khangulyan, and Akihiro Doi, On the origin of high-energy neutrinos from NGC 1068: The role of nonthermal coronal activity, Astrophys. J. Lett. 891, L33 (2020).
  48. Yoshiyuki Inoue and Akihiro Doi, Detection of coronal magnetic activity in nearby active supermassive black holes, Astrophys. J. 869, 114 (2018).
  49. Jack F. Gallimore, Stefi A. Baum, and Christopher P. O’Dea, The parsec-scale radio structure of NGC 1068 and the nature of the nuclear radio source, Astrophys. J. 613, 794 (2004).
  50. Kohta Murase, Hidden hearts of neutrino active galaxies, Astrophys. J. Lett. 941, L17 (2022).
  51. Olmo Piana, Pratika Dayal, Marta Volonteri, and Tirthankar Roy Choudhury, The mass assembly of high-redshift black holes, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 500, 2146 (2020).
  52. L. J. Greenhill, C. R. Gwinn, R. Antonucci, and R. Barvainis, Vlbi imaging of water maser emission from the nuclear torus of NGC 1068, Astrophys. J. Lett. 472, L21 (1996).
  53. Jean-Marc Hure, Origin of non-Keplerian motions of masers in NGC 1068, Astron. Astrophys. 395, L21 (2002).
  54. Giuseppe Lodato and G. Bertin, Non-Keplerian rotation in the nucleus of NGC 1068: Evidence for a massive accretion disk?, Astron. Astrophys. 398, 517 (2003).
  55. Jong-Hak Woo and C. Megan Urry, AGN black hole masses and bolometric luminosities, Astrophys. J. 579, 530 (2002).
  56. Francesca Panessa, L. Bassani, M. Cappi, M. Dadina, X. Barcons, F. J. Carrera, L. C. Ho, and K. Iwasawa, On the X-ray, optical emission line and black hole mass properties of local Seyfert galaxies, Astron. Astrophys. 455, 173 (2006).
  57. Christopher A. Onken, Monica Valluri, Jonathan S. Brown, Peter J. McGregor, Bradley M. Peterson, Misty C. Bentz, Laura Ferrarese, Richard W. Pogge, Marianne Vestergaard, Thaisa Storchi-Bergmann, and Rogemar A. Riffel, The black hole mass of NGC 4151. II. Stellar dynamical measurement from near-infrared integral field spectroscopy, Astrophys. J. 791, 37 (2014).
  58. Mikhail Gorchtein, Stefano Profumo, and Lorenzo Ubaldi, Probing dark matter with active galactic nuclei jets, Phys. Rev. D 82, 083514 (2010).
  59. Laleh Sadeghian, Francesc Ferrer, and Clifford M. Will, Dark matter distributions around massive black holes: A general relativistic analysis, Phys. Rev. D 88, 063522 (2013).
  60. Misty C. Bentz, Peter R. Williams, and Tommaso Treu, The broad line region and black hole mass of NGC 4151, Astrophys. J. 934, 168 (2022).
  61. P. Padovani, F. Oikonomou, M. Petropoulou, P. Giommi, and E. Resconi, TXS 0506+056, the first cosmic neutrino source, is not a BL Lac, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 484, L104 (2019).
  62. M. Cerruti, W. Benbow, X. Chen, J. P. Dumm, L. F. Fortson, and K. Shahinyan, Luminous and high-frequency peaked blazars: The origin of the γ-ray emission from PKS 1424+240, Astron. Astrophys. 606, A68 (2017).
  63. Tiziana Di Matteo, Rupert A. C. Croft, Volker Springel, and Lars Hernquist, Black hole growth and activity in a lambda CDM universe, Astrophys. J. 593, 56 (2003).
  64. Laura Ferrarese, Beyond the bulge: A fundamental relation between supermassive black holes and dark matter halos, Astrophys. J. 578, 90 (2002).
  65. Maarten Baes, Pieter Buyle, George K. T. Hau, and Herwig Dejonghe, Observational evidence for a connection between supermassive black holes and dark matter haloes, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 341, L44 (2003).
  66. Aaron C. Vincent, Carlos A. Argüelles, and Ali Kheirandish, High-energy neutrino attenuation in the Earth and its associated uncertainties, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 11 (2017) 012.
  67. Steve Baker and Robert D Cousins, Clarification of the use of chi-square and likelihood functions in fits to histograms, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. 221, 437 (1984).
  68. Yen-Hsun Lin, Wen-Hua Wu, Meng-Ru Wu, and Henry Tsz-King Wong, Searching for afterglow: Light dark matter boosted by supernova neutrinos, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 111002 (2023).
  69. Yongsoo Jho, Jong-Chul Park, Seong Chan Park, and Po-Yan Tseng, Cosmic-Neutrino-Boosted Dark Matter (νBDM) (2021).
  70. Diptimoy Ghosh, Atanu Guha, and Divya Sachdeva, Exclusion limits on dark matter-neutrino scattering cross section, Phys. Rev. D 105, 103029 (2022).
  71. Markus R. Mosbech, Celine Boehm, Steen Hannestad, Olga Mena, Julia Stadler, and Yvonne Y. Y. Wong, The full Boltzmann hierarchy for dark matter-massive neutrino interactions, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 03 (2021) 066.
  72. Sargis Gasparyan, Damien Bégué, and Narek Sahakyan, Time-dependent lepto-hadronic modelling of the emission from blazar jets with SOPRANO: The case of TXS 0506+056, 3HSP J095507.9 +355101, and 3C 279, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 509, 2102 (2021).
  73. X. G. He, Girish C. Joshi, H. Lew, and R. R. Volkas, NEW Z′ phenomenology, Phys. Rev. D 43, 22 (1991).
  74. Xiao-Gang He, Girish C. Joshi, H. Lew, and R. R. Volkas, Simplest Z′ model, Phys. Rev. D 44, 2118 (1991).
  75. Takeshi Araki, Shihori Hoshino, Toshihiko Ota, Joe Sato, and Takashi Shimomura, Detecting the Lμ−Lτ gauge boson at Belle II, Phys. Rev. D 95, 055006 (2017).
  76. Nicolás Bernal, Jacinto P. Neto, Javier Silva-Malpartida, and Farinaldo S. Queiroz, Enabling thermal dark matter within the vanilla Lμ−Lτ model, Phys. Rev. D 112, 075042 (2025).
  77. Yonatan Kahn, Gordan Krnjaic, Nhan Tran, and Andrew Whitbeck, M3: A new muon missing momentum experiment to probe (g−2)μ and dark matter at Fermilab, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2018) 153.
  78. Matthew R. Buckley, Andrew Mastbaum, and Gopolang Mohlabeng, Directional neutrino searches for galactic center dark matter at large underground LArTPCs, Phys. Rev. D 107, 092006 (2023).
  79. James D. Wells, Annihilation cross-sections for relic densities in the low velocity limit, Report No. , 1994, arXiv:hep-ph/9404219.
  80. Gary Steigman, Basudeb Dasgupta, and John F. Beacom, Precise relic WIMP abundance and its impact on searches for dark matter annihilation, Phys. Rev. D 86, 023506 (2012).
  81. N. Aghanim et al., Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters, Astron. Astrophys. 641, A6 (2020); 652, C4(E) (2021).
  82. Kensuke Akita1, Shin’ichiro Ando, Constraints on dark matter-neutrino scattering from the Milky-Way satellites and subhalo modeling for dark acoustic oscillations, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 11 (2023) 037.
  83. T. Bertólez-Martínez, G. Herrera, P. Martínez-Miravé, and J. Terol Calvo, The highest-energy neutrino event constrains dark matter-neutrino interactions, Phys. Rev. D 113, 103052 (2026).
  84. R. Mondol, S. Bouri, A. K. Saha, and R. Laha, Road through darkness: Probing dark matter-neutrino interactions using KM3-230213A, arXiv:2506.19910.
  85. P. S. B. Dev, D. Kim, D. Sathyan, K. Sinha, and Y. Zhang, New constraints on neutrino-dark matter interactions: A comprehensive analysis, arXiv:2507.01000.

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 114, 043048– Published 19 August, 2026
  • Received 16 February 2026
  • Accepted 22 July 2026
Article part of CHORUS
Crossmark - Check for updates button

© 2026 American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation