Searching for sub-eV Sterile Neutrinos in Neutrino Telescopes

Abstract

With the forthcoming deployment of IceCube-Upgrade, unprecedented statistics of atmospheric neutrinos in the energy range (1-100) GeV will become available, providing a valuable opportunity to probe physics beyond the Standard Model in the neutrino sector. In this study, we calculate the sensitivity of the IceCube-Upgrade to sterile neutrinos with mass-squared splittings $\lesssim 1{\mathrm{eV}}^2$. We demonstrate that, particularly due to the (1-10) GeV energy window, $\hat{I}{½}_{\hat{I}}¼-\hat{I}{½}_s$ mixing angles as small as $\sim 5^{\circ }$ can be probed by IceCube-Upgrade for all mass-squared splittings below $1{\mathrm{eV}}^2$. Furthermore, we investigate the potential impact of a sterile neutrino state on the precision determination of standard atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters in the IceCube-Upgrade.

16 pages, 9 figures