Dark matter interpretation of the Super-Kamiokande antineutrino excess and predictions for JUNO
Super-Kamiokande has reported a small excess of electron antineutrino events in the 20 MeV energy range, in the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background. We interpret this signal as a possible indication of dark matter that annihilates dominantly into neutrinos, pointing to a thermal dark matter candidate with s s -wave annihilation and with mass in the tens of MeV range. This mass scale naturally fits into rich dark sector extensions of the Standard Model. Neutrino experiments, including JUNO, will be able to test this hypothesis in the coming years.
Authors
- Alessandro Granelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0941-8126)
- Silvia Pascoli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2958-456X)
- Salvador Rosauro-Alcaraz
Institutions
- Université Clermont Auvergne (FR)
- Instituto de Física Corpuscular (ES)
- Laboratoire de Physique de Clermont Auvergne (FR)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Bologna (IT)
- University of Bologna (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- SciPost Physics
- Published
- 2026-10-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.21468/scipostphys.21.4.106
- Primary Topic
- Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- European Commission
- Università di Bologna
- HORIZON EUROPE Framework Programme
- Agencia Estatal de Investigación
- HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions