Echo Technique to Distinguish Flavors of Astrophysical Neutrinos

Abstract

The flavor composition of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos is a rich observable. However, present analyses cannot effectively distinguish particle showers induced by ${\nu }_e$ versus ${\nu }_{\tau }$. We show that this can be accomplished by measuring the intensities of the delayed, collective light emission from muon decays and neutron captures, which are, on average, greater for ${\nu }_{\tau }$ than for ${\nu }_e$. This new technique would significantly improve tests of the nature of astrophysical sources and of neutrino properties. We discuss the promising prospects for implementing it in IceCube and other detectors.

13 pages, 9 figures. Matches published version

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• Inferring the flavor of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos at their sources
• The Future of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrino Flavor Measurements
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• W-boson and trident production in TeV--PeV neutrino observatories
• Detection of astrophysical tau neutrino candidates in IceCube
• The ultra-high-energy neutrino-nucleon cross section: measurement forecasts for an era of cosmic EeV-neutrino discovery
• Evidence for a break in the spectrum of astrophysical neutrinos
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• Signatures of microscopic black holes and extra dimensions at future neutrino telescopes
• Strong constraints on non-standard neutrino interactions: LHC vs. IceCube
• Neutrino Splitting for Lorentz-Violating Neutrinos: Detailed Analysis
• Astronomy with energy dependent flavour ratios of extragalactic neutrinos
• Tau Neutrino Identification in Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations Without Particle Identification or Unitarity
• Towards detecting super-GeV dark matter via annihilation to neutrinos
• Beyond first light: Global monitoring for high-energy neutrino astronomy
• Final state radiation from high and ultrahigh energy neutrino interactions
• Neutron Tagging Can Greatly Reduce Spallation Backgrounds in Super-Kamiokande
• Neutrino Interaction Physics in Neutrino Telescopes
• Sensitivities of KM3NeT on decaying dark matter
• No Flavor Anisotropy in the High-Energy Neutrino Sky Upholds Lorentz Invariance