End of the cosmic neutrino energy spectrum

Abstract

There may be a high-energy cutoff of neutrino events in IceCube data. In particular, IceCube does not observe either continuum events above 2 PeV, or the Standard Model Glashow-resonance events expected at 6.3 PeV. There are also no higher energy neutrino signatures in the ANITA and Auger experiments. This absence of high-energy neutrino events motivates a fundamental restriction on neutrino energies above a few PeV. We postulate a simple scenario to terminate the neutrino spectrum that is Lorentz-invariance violating, but with a limiting neutrino velocity that is always smaller than the speed of light. If the limiting velocity of the neutrino applies also to its associated charged lepton, then a significant consequence is that the two-body decay modes of the charged pion are forbidden above two times the maximum neutrino energy, while the radiative decay modes are suppressed at higher energies. Such stabilized pions may serve as cosmic ray primaries.

6 pages. Version to appear in PLB

References in corpus (3)

• Observational Constraints on the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Neutrino Flux from the Second Flight of the ANITA Experiment
• New Limits on the Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Neutrino Flux from the ANITA Experiment
• Search for Point-Like Sources of Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos at the Pierre Auger Observatory and Improved Limit on the Diffuse Flux of Tau Neutrinos

Cited by in corpus (9)

• IceCube-Gen2: The Window to the Extreme Universe
• Spectral analysis of the high-energy IceCube neutrinos
• Glashow resonance as a window into cosmic neutrino sources
• Neutrino Lighthouse at Sagittarius A*
• Probing decaying heavy dark matter with the 4-year IceCube HESE data
• Estimating the contribution of Galactic sources to the diffuse neutrino flux
• Searching New Particles at Neutrino Telescopes with Quantum-Gravitational Decoherence
• Looking forward to forward physics at the CERN's LHC
• Testing Lorentz Symmetry using High Energy Astrophysics Observations