IceCube and the origin of ANITA-IV events

Abstract

Recently, the ANITA collaboration announced the detection of new, unsettling upgoing Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) events. Understanding their origin is pressing to ensure success of the incoming UHE neutrino program. In this work, we study their internal consistency and the implications of the lack of similar events in IceCube. We introduce a generic, simple parametrization to study the compatibility between these two observatories in Standard Model-like and Beyond Standard Model scenarios: an incoming flux of particles that interact with Earth nucleons with cross section $\sigma$, producing particle showers along with long-lived particles that decay with lifetime $\tau$ and generate a shower that explains ANITA observations. We find that the ANITA angular distribution imposes significant constraints, and when including null observations from IceCube only $\tau \sim 10^{-3}$ - $10^{-2}\mathrm{s}$ and $\sigma \sim 10^{-33}$ - $10^{-32}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^2$ can explain the data. This hypothesis is testable with future IceCube data. Finally, we discuss a specific model that can realize this scenario. Our analysis highlights the importance of simultaneous observations by high-energy optical neutrino telescopes and new UHE radio detectors to uncover cosmogenic neutrinos or discover new physics.

11 pages, 7 figures + Appendices. Comments welcome! v2: Added references and expanded the discussion on particle physics models. Matches version accepted by JHEP

References in corpus (15)

• Spectral analysis of the high-energy IceCube neutrinos
• Revisiting the Dark Photon Explanation of the Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment
• A Dark Matter Interpretation of the ANITA Anomalous Events
• The ultra-high-energy neutrino-nucleon cross section: measurement forecasts for an era of cosmic EeV-neutrino discovery
• Do you smell something decaying? Updated linear constraints on decaying dark matter scenarios
• Can the ANITA anomalous events be due to new physics?
• Observing EeV neutrinos through the Earth: GZK and the anomalous ANITA events
• Probing New Physics at Future Tau Neutrino Telescopes
• Constraining Light Thermal Inelastic Dark Matter with NA64
• Detector Requirements for Model-Independent Measurements of Ultrahigh Energy Neutrino Cross Sections
• The ANITA Anomalous Events and Axion Quark Nuggets
• TauRunner: A Public Python Program to Propagate Neutral and Charged Leptons
• Neutrino propagation in the Earth and emerging charged leptons with $\text{nuPyProp}$
• Probing Quantum Gravity with Elastic Interactions of Ultra-High-Energy Neutrinos
• Acoustic Neutrino Detection In a Adriatic Multidisciplinary Observatory (ANDIAMO)