Evidence for a Spectral Break or Curvature in the Spectrum of Astrophysical Neutrinos from 5 TeV--10 PeV

Abstract

We report improved measurements of the all flavor astrophysical neutrino spectrum with IceCube by combining complementary neutrino samples in two independent analyses. Both analyses show evidence of a harder spectrum at energies below $\sim$30~TeV compared to higher energies where the spectrum is well characterized by a power law. The spectrum is better described by a log parabola or a broken power law, the latter being the preferred model. Both, however, reject a single power law over an energy range 5~TeV-10~PeV with a significance $>4σ$, providing new constraints on properties of cosmic neutrino sources.

Submitted to Physical Review Letters as part of a joint submission with "Improved measurements of the TeV--PeV extragalactic neutrino spectrum from joint analyses of IceCube tracks and cascades" which has been submitted to Physical Review D