Description
Authors: Bhupal Dev (Washington University in St. Louis)
Bhaskar Dutta (Texas A&M University), Aparajitha Karthikeyan, Writasree Maitra (Washington University in St. Louis), Louie Strigari (Texas A&M University), Ankur Verma (Texas A&M University)
Presenter: Aparajitha Karthikeyan
Abstract: The recent KM3NeT observation of the O(100 PeV) event KM3-230213A is puzzling because IceCube, with a much larger effective area and exposure, has not found any such events. In this talk, we will present a novel solution to this conundrum in terms of dark matter (DM) scattering in the Earth's crust. We show that intermediate dark-sector particles that decay into muons are copiously produced when high-energy (∼100 PeV) DM propagates through a sufficient amount of Earth overburden. To address the non-observation of similar events at IceCube, we will demonstrate via two examples of weakly coupled long-lived dark sector scenarios that are sourced from a high-luminosity blazar. We calculate the corresponding dark sector cross sections, lifetimes, and blazar luminosities required to yield one event at KM3NeT, satisfy all the lab-based constraints, and also predict the number of IceCube events for these parameters that can be tested very soon.
