2025/10/24 by Argüelles, Carlos A., Bertólez-Martínez, Toni, Burgos-Mondéjar, Alba +3
#FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.21929
In this article, we introduce the concept of topographic enhancement in the context of ultra-high-energy neutrino detection by underwater neutrino telescopes. We demonstrate that the local topography around KM3NeT/ARCA can increase the detection efficiency in scenarios involving long-lived particles by up to a factor of ∼ 3 due to the presence of an underwater mountain range in the direction of Malta. We consider a simplified model-independent approach that parametrizes the new physics able to generate both track-like and cascade-like signals in neutrino telescopes. When explaining the KM3-230213A event with a diffuse dark flux hypothesis, including its azimuthal direction--in addition to the zenith angle--provides additional constraints on the parameter space. In this effective model, the observations by KM3NeT and ANITA-IV can be simultaneously explained and the global tension with the lack of a corresponding detection in IceCube is reduced to 2.4 sigma. This work underscores the importance of incorporating topographic effects in the design and optimization of next-generation neutrino telescopes, as is done in the context of mountain-based detectors such as TAMBO. We present a numerical code which can be used to easily extend this topographical analysis to other experiments.