Sterile neutrinos and flavor ratios in IceCube
| Autor: | Xiaoping Wang, Vedran Brdar, Joachim Kopp |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
Physics Sterile neutrino High energy Particle physics Muon Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors 010308 nuclear & particles physics Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena High Energy Physics::Phenomenology Dark matter FOS: Physical sciences Flux Astronomy and Astrophysics Baseline data 01 natural sciences 3. Good health High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) 0103 physical sciences High Energy Physics::Experiment Neutrino Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 010306 general physics Flavor |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics |
| ISSN: | 1475-7516 1126-6708 0004-637X |
| Popis: | The flavor composition of astrophysical neutrinos observed in neutrino telescopes is a powerful discriminator between different astrophysical neutrino production mechanisms and can also teach us about the particle physics properties of neutrinos. In this paper, we investigate how the possible existence of light sterile neutrinos can affect these flavor ratios. We consider two scenarios: (i) neutrino production in conventional astrophysical sources, followed by partial oscillation into sterile states; (ii) neutrinos from dark matter decay with a primary flavor composition enhanced in tau neutrinos or sterile neutrinos. Throughout the paper, we constrain the sterile neutrino mixing parameters from a full global fit to short and long baseline data. We present our results in the form of flavor triangles and, for scenario (ii), as exclusion limits on the dark matter mass and lifetime, derived from a fit to IceCube high energy starting events and through-going muons. We argue that identifying a possible flux of neutrinos from dark matter decay may require analyzing the flavor composition as a function of neutrino energy. 15 pages, 6 figures; v2 matched to journal version |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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