Physics Reach of High-Energy and High-Statistics IceCube Atmospheric Neutrino Data

Abstract

This paper investigates the physics reach of the IceCube neutrino detector when it will have collected a data set of order one million atmospheric neutrinos with energies in the 0.1 \sim 10^4 TeV range. The paper consists of three parts. We first demonstrate how to simulate the detector performance using relatively simple analytic methods. Because of the high energies of the neutrinos, their oscillations, propagation in the Earth and regeneration due to τdecay must be treated in a coherent way. We set up the formalism to do this and discuss the implications. In a final section we apply the methods developed to evaluate the potential of IceCube to study new physics beyond neutrino oscillations. Not surprisingly, because of the increased energy and statistics over present experiments, existing bounds on violations of the equivalence principle and of Lorentz invariance can be improved by over two orders of magnitude. The methods developed can be readily applied to other non-conventional physics associated with neutrinos.

21 pages, 7 figures, Revtex4

Cited by in corpus (57)

• Phenomenology with Massive Neutrinos
• IceCube-Gen2: The Window to the Extreme Universe
• Sterile Neutrinos
• IceCube: An Instrument for Neutrino Astronomy
• Global three-parameter model for neutrino oscillations using Lorentz violation
• Perturbative Lorentz and CPT violation for neutrino and antineutrino oscillations
• Design and Sensitivity of the Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G)
• Guaranteed and Prospective Galactic TeV Neutrino Sources
• Flavor Ratios of Astrophysical Neutrinos: Implications for Precision Measurements
• An eV-scale sterile neutrino search using eight years of atmospheric muon neutrino data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• One-Loop Renormalization of Pure Yang-Mills with Lorentz Violation
• First Constraints on the Complete Neutrino Mixing Matrix with a Sterile Neutrino
• Signature of sterile species in atmospheric neutrino data at neutrino telescopes
• High energy neutrinos from neutralino annihilations in the Sun
• How astrophysical neutrino sources could be used for early measurements of neutrino mass hierarchy and leptonic CP phase
• Indirect Dark Matter Detection Limits from the Ultra-Faint Milky Way Satellite Segue 1
• Search for High-Energy Neutrino Emission from Radio-Bright AGN
• Neutrino flux ratios at neutrino telescopes: The role of uncertainties of neutrino mixing parameters and applications to neutrino decay
• TeV gamma-rays and neutrinos from photo-disintegration of nuclei in Cygnus OB2
• Spin Dependence of Dark Matter Scattering
• Radiography of the Earth's Core and Mantle with Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Determination of the Atmospheric Neutrino Fluxes from Atmospheric Neutrino Data
• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• Non-standard interactions with high-energy atmospheric neutrinos at IceCube
• W-boson and trident production in TeV--PeV neutrino observatories
• Neutrino tomography - Learning about the Earth's interior using the propagation of neutrinos
• Muon Fluxes From Dark Matter Annihilation
• nuSQuIDS: A toolbox for neutrino propagation
• Observing EeV neutrinos through the Earth: GZK and the anomalous ANITA events
• LS I +61 303 as a potential neutrino source on the light of MAGIC results
• Probing Dark Matter Dynamics via Earthborn Neutrinos at IceCube
• Probing New Physics at Future Tau Neutrino Telescopes
• Constraining the Violation of Equivalence Principle with IceCube Atmospheric Neutrino Data
• Atmospheric neutrinos in ice and measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters
• TauRunner: A Public Python Program to Propagate Neutral and Charged Leptons
• Neutrinos from Cosmic Ray Accelerators in the Cygnus Region of the Galaxy
• Investigating the correlations between IceCube high-energy neutrinos and Fermi-LAT gamma-ray observations
• Neutrino signal from gamma-ray loud binaries powered by high energy protons
• Gamma Ray Burst Neutrinos Probing Quantum Gravity
• Dark Matter Prospects in Deflected Mirage Mediation
• Neutrino Signals from Solar Neutralino Annihilations in Anomaly Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking Model
• IceCube constraints on Violation of Equivalence Principle
• First Search for Unstable Sterile Neutrinos with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• The Highest Energy Neutrinos
• Cascade Appearance Signatures of Sterile Neutrinos at 1-100 TeV
• IceCube Science
• Physics Potential of Future Atmospheric Neutrino Searches
• CPT invariance and neutrino physics
• Violation of Equivalence Principle in Neutrino Sector: Probing the Extended Parameter Space
• Non-thermal neutrinos from supernovae leaving a magnetar
• Potential of Neutrino Telescopes to Detect Quantum Gravity-Induced Decoherence in the Presence of Dark Fermions
• Investigating the correlations between IceCube high-energy neutrinos and Fermi-LAT $\gamma$-ray observations. II
• Sensitivity of KM3NeT to Violation of Equivalence Principle
• Using Secondary Tau Neutrinos to Probe Heavy Dark Matter Decays in Earth
• High Energy Neutrinos with a Mediterranean Neutrino Telescope
• The Relevance of Mediterranean Neutrino Telescope Sites on Earth-skimming tau neutrino detection
• Impact of different neutrino decoherence formalisms at the future long-baseline Experiments