Probe Of Sterile Neutrinos Using Astrophysical Neutrino Flavor

Abstract

In this paper, we study the effect of active-neutrino-sterile-neutrino mixing in the expected high-energy astrophysical neutrino flavor content. Non-unitarity in the measurement of the three active neutrinos can be due to the existence of sterile neutrino states. We introduce the concept of the four-flavor tetrahedron in order to visualize the lack of unitarity in the astrophysical neutrino three-flavor triangle. We demonstrate that active-sterile neutrino mixings modify the allowed region of the astrophysical flavor ratio from the standard case. However, a projection of the four-flavor tetrahedron has restrictions of phase space similar to the three-flavor triangle. On the other hand, the initial presence of astrophysical sterile neutrinos drastically changes the scenario, and it allows an apparent unitarity violation in the three-flavor triangle space. Using current global fit constraints including the non-unitarity case, we also illustrate the allowed astrophysical neutrino flavor ratios. Thus, the measurement of the high-energy astrophyscal neutrino flavor content allows us to explore sterile neutrinos independently of the sterile neutrino mass scale. These are topics of investigation for current and future neutrino telescopes.

arXiv comment12 pages, 6 figures. New appendix detailing the algorithm used to generate points ensemble. Updated to match accepted version to appear in JCAP

References in corpus (55)

• Evidence for High-Energy Extraterrestrial Neutrinos at the IceCube Detector
• Evidence for Neutrino Oscillations from the Observation of Electron Anti-neutrinos in a Muon Anti-Neutrino Beam
• The Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly
• Neutrino Physics with JUNO
• Observation of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos in Three Years of IceCube Data
• Letter of Intent for KM3NeT 2.0
• Global analysis of three-flavour neutrino oscillations: synergies and tensions in the determination of theta_23, delta_CP, and the mass ordering
• Significant Excess of ElectronLike Events in the MiniBooNE Short-Baseline Neutrino Experiment
• A combined maximum-likelihood analysis of the high-energy astrophysical neutrino flux measured with IceCube
• Detecting Tau Neutrino Oscillations at PeV Energies
• Detecting Nutau Oscillations as PeV Energies
• Statistical Significance of the Gallium Anomaly
• Updated global analysis of neutrino oscillations in the presence of eV-scale sterile neutrinos
• Evidence for Astrophysical Muon Neutrinos from the Northern Sky with IceCube
• Physics Potential of a Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment Using J-PARC Neutrino Beam and Hyper-Kamiokande
• Non-Unitarity, sterile neutrinos, and Non-Standard neutrino Interactions
• Searches for Sterile Neutrinos with the IceCube Detector
• Anarchy and Hierarchy
• Flavor Ratio of Astrophysical Neutrinos above 35 TeV in IceCube
• Search for CP violation in Neutrino and Antineutrino Oscillations by the T2K experiment with $2.2\times 10^{21}$ protons on target
• Effects of neutrino mixing on high-energy cosmic neutrino flux
• Dark Neutrino Portal to Explain MiniBooNE excess
• Search for sterile neutrinos in MINOS and MINOS+ using a two-detector fit
• New constraints on oscillation parameters from ${\nu }_e$ appearance and ${\nu }_{\mu }$ disappearance in the NOvA experiment
• Theoretically palatable flavor combinations of astrophysical neutrinos
• Status of Light Sterile Neutrino Searches
• eV-scale Sterile Neutrinos
• Search for sterile neutrino mixing using three years of IceCube DeepCore data
• New Physics in Astrophysical Neutrino Flavor
• Double Bangs from New Physics in IceCube
• Unitarity and the three flavour neutrino mixing matrix
• Measurements using the inelasticity distribution of multi-TeV neutrino interactions in IceCube
• Testing decay of astrophysical neutrinos with incomplete information
• Flavor Ratios of Astrophysical Neutrinos: Implications for Precision Measurements
• Limits on Active to Sterile Neutrino Oscillations from Disappearance Searches in the MINOS, Daya Bay, and Bugey-3 Experiments
• Which is the flavor of cosmic neutrinos seen by IceCube?
• First Constraints on the Complete Neutrino Mixing Matrix with a Sterile Neutrino
• Testing New Physics Explanations of MiniBooNE Anomaly at Neutrino Scattering Experiments
• Accelerator and Reactor Neutrino Oscillation Experiments in a Simple Three-Generation Framework
• PINGU: A Vision for Neutrino and Particle Physics at the South Pole
• MeV-scale sterile neutrino decays at the Fermilab Short-Baseline Neutrino program
• Astrophysical neutrinos flavored with Beyond the Standard Model physics
• Universe's Worth of Electrons to Probe Long-Range Interactions of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos
• Unifying leptogenesis, dark matter and high-energy neutrinos with right-handed neutrino mixing via Higgs portal
• Flavor of cosmic neutrinos preserved by ultralight dark matter
• Sterile Neutrinos and Flavor Ratios in IceCube
• Unitarity Bounds of Astrophysical Neutrinos
• Single photon events from neutral current interactions at MiniBooNE
• On the single photon background to nu_e appearance at MiniBooNE
• Can neutrino-induced photon production explain the low energy excess in MiniBooNE?
• A Search for Single Photon Events in Neutrino Interactions
• Non-unitary evolution of neutrinos in matter and the leptonic unitarity test
• Effects of a neutrino-dark energy coupling on oscillations of high-energy neutrinos
• Severe Constraints on New Physics Explanations of the MiniBooNE Excess
• Search for neutral-current induced single photon production at the ND280 near detector in T2K

Cited by in corpus (17)

• IceCube-Gen2: The Window to the Extreme Universe
• The IceCube high-energy starting event sample: Description and flux characterization with 7.5 years of data
• The Future of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrino Flavor Measurements
• Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube neutrino telescope
• Snowmass White Paper: Beyond the Standard Model effects on Neutrino Flavor
• MicroBooNE and the ${\nu }_e$ Interpretation of the MiniBooNE Low-Energy Excess
• Detection of astrophysical tau neutrino candidates in IceCube
• Oscillation of high-energy neutrinos from choked jets in stellar and merger ejecta
• A search for an eV-scale sterile neutrino using improved high-energy ${\nu }_{\mu }$ event reconstruction in IceCube
• Testing electroweak scale seesaw models at $e^{-}\gamma$ and $\gamma \gamma$ colliders
• Flavors of Astrophysical Neutrinos with Active-Sterile Mixing
• Requirements on common solutions to the LSND and MiniBooNE excesses: a post-MicroBooNE study
• Oscillations of sterile neutrinos from dark matter decay eliminates the IceCube-Fermi tension
• Cascade Appearance Signatures of Sterile Neutrinos at 1-100 TeV
• Detecting High-Energy Neutrinos from Galactic Supernovae with ATLAS
• Using Neutrino Oscillations to Measure $H_0$
• Neutrino Decoherence via Modified Dispersion