Disentangling neutrino-nucleon cross section and high energy neutrino flux with a km^3 neutrino telescope

Abstract

The energy--zenith angular event distribution in a neutrino telescope provides a unique tool to determine at the same time the neutrino-nucleon cross section at extreme kinematical regions, and the high energy neutrino flux. By using a simple parametrization for fluxes and cross sections, we present a sensitivity analysis for the case of a km^3 neutrino telescope. In particular, we consider the specific case of an under-water Mediterranean telescope placed at the NEMO site, although most of our results also apply to an under-ice detector such as IceCube. We determine the sensitivity to departures from standard values of the cross sections above 1 PeV which can be probed independently from an a-priori knowledge of the normalization and energy dependence of the flux. We also stress that the capability to tag downgoing neutrino showers in the PeV range against the cosmic ray induced background of penetrating muons appears to be a crucial requirement to derive meaningful constraints on the cross section.

arXiv comment10 pages, 28 figures

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• Extracting the Energy-Dependent Neutrino-Nucleon Cross Section Above 10 TeV Using IceCube Showers
• Search for High-Energy Neutrino Emission from Radio-Bright AGN
• Neutrino-nucleus cross sections for W-boson and trident production
• W-boson and trident production in TeV--PeV neutrino observatories
• The ultra-high-energy neutrino-nucleon cross section: measurement forecasts for an era of cosmic EeV-neutrino discovery
• Superheavy Dark Matter and ANITA's Anomalous Events
• Detector Requirements for Model-Independent Measurements of Ultrahigh Energy Neutrino Cross Sections
• Hunting the Glashow Resonance with PeV Neutrino Telescopes
• Sensitivity on Earth Core and Mantle densities using Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Upward shower rates at neutrino telescopes directly determine the neutrino flux
• Probing strong dynamics with cosmic neutrinos
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