Abstract
We study cosmological scenarios in which high-energy neutrinos are emitted from the decay of long-lived massive particles at the cosmic time later than a redshift of ∼ 106. The high-energy neutrino events recently observed by the IceCube experiment suggest a new source of high-energy cosmic-ray neutrinos; decay of a heavy particle can be one of the possibilities. We calculate the spectrum of the high-energy neutrinos emitted from the decay of long-lived particles, taking account of the neutrino scattering processes with background neutrinos. Then, we derive bounds on the scenario using the observation of high-energy cosmic-ray neutrino flux. We also study constraints from the spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background and the big-bang nucleosynthesis. In addition, we show that the PeV neutrinos observed by the IceCube experiment can originate from the decay of a massive particle with its mass as large as O(1010 GeV).
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Ema, Y., Jinno, R. & Moroi, T. Cosmological implications of high-energy neutrino emission from the decay of long-lived particle. J. High Energ. Phys. 2014, 150 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2014)150
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2014)150