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Implications of the KM3NeT ultrahigh-energy event on neutrino self-interactions
Phys. Rev. D 113, 043022 – Published 11 February, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bb85-7kyf
Abstract
Neutrino self-interactions () mediated by light bosonic particles can produce characteristic spectral dips in astrophysical neutrino fluxes, thereby altering the expected energy spectrum. The high-energy astrophysical neutrino spectrum has been extensively used to probe models through these distinctive features. The recent detection of the ultrahigh-energy event KM3-230213A presents a new opportunity to explore phenomenology at extreme energies. In this work, we investigate two implications of this observation, assuming the event originates from a diffuse power-law spectrum. First, we find that -induced spectral distortions can mildly alleviate the tension between the KM3-230213A detection and the previous nonobservation of PeV-scale neutrinos in IceCube data. Second, we derive the strongest constraints on the -flavored coupling strength for mediator masses around 100 MeV. Our analysis shows that neutrino telescopes can surpass existing collider bounds in this mass range. In the near future, IceCube-Gen2 is expected to significantly enhance sensitivity, including regions relevant to alleviating the Hubble and neutrino mass tensions.
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