Detecting MeV gauge bosons with high-energy neutrino telescopes

Abstract

If annihilating MeV-scale dark matter particles are responsible for the observed 511 keV emission from the Galactic bulge, then new light gauge bosons which mediate the dark matter annihilations may have other observable consequences. In particular, if such a gauge boson exists and has even very small couplings to standard model neutrinos, cosmic neutrinos with $\ensuremath{\sim}\mathrm{TeV}$ energies will scatter with the cosmic neutrino background through resonant exchange, resulting in a distinctive spectral absorption line in the high-energy neutrino spectrum. Such a feature could potentially be detected by future high-energy neutrino telescopes.