Standard Model Explanation of the Ultra-high Energy Neutrino Events at IceCube

Abstract

The recent observation of two PeV events at IceCube, followed by an additional 26 events between 30 - 300 TeV, has generated considerable speculations on its origin, and many exotic New Physics explanations have been invoked. For a reliable interpretation, it is however important to first scrutinize the Standard Model (SM) expectations carefully, including the theoretical uncertainties, mainly due to the parton distribution functions. Assuming a new isotropic cosmic neutrino flux with a simple unbroken power-law spectrum, $\Phi \propto E^{-s}$ for the entire energy range of interest, we find that with $s=1.5$ - 2, the SM neutrino-nucleon interactions are sufficient to explain all the observed events so far, without the need for any beyond the SM explanation. With more statistics, this powerful detector could provide a unique test of the SM up to the PeV scale, and lead to important clues of New Physics.

9 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables; expanded version with added discussion on the cross section, event distributions, and spectral index

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Cited by in corpus (50)

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• Extracting the Energy-Dependent Neutrino-Nucleon Cross Section Above 10 TeV Using IceCube Showers
• Snowmass 2021 whitepaper: Proton structure at the precision frontier
• Neutrino Telescopes as QCD Microscopes
• Spectral analysis of the high-energy IceCube neutrinos
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• IceCube events and decaying dark matter: hints and constraints
• Boosted Dark Matter in IceCube and at the Galactic Center
• White Paper on New Opportunities at the Next-Generation Neutrino Experiments (Part 1: BSM Neutrino Physics and Dark Matter)
• Searching for Traces of Planck-Scale Physics with High Energy Neutrinos
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• W-boson and trident production in TeV--PeV neutrino observatories
• R-parity Violating Supersymmetric Explanation of the Anomalous Events at ANITA
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• The Leptoquark Implication from the CMS and IceCube Experiments
• Interactions of Astrophysical Neutrinos with Dark Matter: A model building perspective
• Ultra-High-Energy Tau Neutrino Cross Sections with GRAND and POEMMA
• R-parity Violating Supersymmetry at IceCube
• IC at IC: IceCube can constrain the intrinsic charm of the proton
• The neutrino-nucleon cross section at UHE and its astrophysical implications
• Hidden Glashow resonance in neutrino-nucleus collisions
• Constraining Astrophysical Neutrino Flavor Composition from Leptonic Unitarity
• Some possible sources of IceCube TeV-PeV neutrino events
• Describing the Observed Cosmic Neutrinos by Interactions of Nuclei with Matter
• Nuclear effects in high-energy neutrino interactions
• Flavor ratios of extragalactical neutrinos and neutrino shortcuts in extra dimensions
• Dimuons in Neutrino Telescopes: New Predictions and First Search in IceCube
• Hunting the Glashow Resonance with PeV Neutrino Telescopes
• Implications of a Electroweak Triplet Scalar Leptoquark on the Ultra-High Energy Neutrino Events at IceCube
• Probing strong dynamics with cosmic neutrinos
• Cutoff of IceCube Neutrino Spectrum due to t-channel Resonant Absorption by C$\nu$B
• Estimating non-linear QCD effects in ultrahigh energy neutrino events at IceCube
• Early Decay of Peccei-Quinn Fermion and the IceCube Neutrino Events
• Phenomenology of Colored Radiative Neutrino Mass Model and Its Implications on the Cosmic-ray Observations
• Blazar origin of some IceCube events
• Final state radiation from high and ultrahigh energy neutrino interactions
• New IceCube data and color octet neutrino interpretation of the PeV energy events
• Distributions for tau neutrino interactions observed through the decay $\tau \to \mu {\nu }_{\tau }{\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }$
• On the angular distribution of IceCube high-energy events
• Signatures of Supersymmetry in Neutrino Telescopes