Flavor Ratio of Astrophysical Neutrinos above 35 TeV in IceCube

Abstract

A diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos above $100\mathrm{TeV}$ has been observed at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Here we extend this analysis to probe the astrophysical flux down to $35\mathrm{TeV}$ and analyze its flavor composition by classifying events as showers or tracks. Taking advantage of lower atmospheric backgrounds for shower-like events, we obtain a shower-biased sample containing 129 showers and 8 tracks collected in three years from 2010 to 2013. We demonstrate consistency with the $(f_e:f_{\mu }:f_{\tau }{)}_{\oplus }\approx (1:1:1{)}_{\oplus }$ flavor ratio at Earth commonly expected from the averaged oscillations of neutrinos produced by pion decay in distant astrophysical sources. Limits are placed on non-standard flavor compositions that cannot be produced by averaged neutrino oscillations but could arise in exotic physics scenarios. A maximally track-like composition of $(0:1:0{)}_{\oplus }$ is excluded at $3.3\sigma$, and a purely shower-like composition of $(1:0:0{)}_{\oplus }$ is excluded at $2.3\sigma$.

8 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to PRL

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