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Register a new userWhich is the flavor of cosmic neutrinos seen by IceCube?
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Added by
Francesco Villante L
Publication date
2015
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We analyze the high-energy neutrino events observed by IceCube, aiming to probe the initial flavor of cosmic neutrinos. We study the track-to-shower ratio of the subset with energy above 60 TeV, where the signal is expected to dominate and show that different production mechanisms give rise to different predictions even accounting for the uncertainties due to neutrino oscillations. We include for the first time the passing muons observed by IceCube in the analysis. They corroborate the hypotheses that cosmic neutrinos have been seen and their flavor matches expectations.
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The core mission of the IceCube Neutrino observatory is to study the origin and propagation of cosmic rays. IceCube, with its surface component IceTop, observes multiple signatures to accomplish this mission. Most important are the astrophysical neutrinos that are produced in interactions of cosmic rays, close to their sources and in interstellar space. IceCube is the first instrument that measures the properties of this astrophysical neutrino flux, and constrains its origin. In addition, the spectrum, composition and anisotropy of the local cosmic-ray flux are obtained from measurements of atmospheric muons and showers. Here we provide an overview of recent findings from the analysis of IceCube data, and their implications on our understanding of cosmic rays.
The Telescope Array (TA) has observed a statistically significant excess in cosmic-rays with energies above 57 EeV in a region of approximately 1150 square degrees centered on coordinates (R.A. = 146.7, Dec. = 43.2). We note that the location of this excess correlates with two of the 28 extraterrestrial neutrinos recently observed by IceCube. The overlap between the two IceCube neutrinos and the TA excess is statistically significant at the 2$sigma$ level. Furthermore, the spectrum and intensity of the IceCube neutrinos is consistent with a single source which would also produce the TA excess. Finally, we discuss possible source classes with the correct characteristics to explain the cosmic-ray and neutrino fluxes with a single source.
The IceCube experiment has recently released 3 years of data of the first ever detected high-energy (>30 TeV) neutrinos, which are consistent with an extraterrestrial origin. In this talk, we compute the compatibility of the observed track-to-shower ratio with possible combinations of neutrino flavors with relative proportion (alpha_e:alpha_mu:alpha_tau). Although this observation is naively favored for the canonical (1:1:1) at Earth, once we consider the IceCube expectations for the atmospheric muon and neutrino backgrounds, this flavor combination presents some tension with data. We find that, for an astrophysical neutrino E_nu^{-2} energy spectrum, (1:1:1) at Earth is currently disfavored at 92% C.L. We discuss the trend of this result by comparing the results with the 2-year and 3-year data. We obtain the best-fit for (1:0:0) at Earth, which cannot be achieved from any flavor ratio at sources with averaged oscillations during propagation. Although it is not statistically significant at present, if confirmed, this result would suggest either a misunderstanding of the expected background events, or a misidentification of tracks as showers, or even more compellingly, some exotic physics which deviates from the standard scenario.
We present a flavor and energy inference analysis for each high-energy neutrino event observed by the IceCube observatory during six years of data taking. Our goal is to obtain, for the first time, an estimate of the posterior probability distribution for the most relevant properties, such as the neutrino energy and flavor, of the neutrino-nucleon interactions producing shower and track events in the IceCube detector. For each event the main observables in the IceCube detector are the deposited energy and the event topology (showers or tracks) produced by the Cherenkov light by the transit through a medium of charged particles created in neutrino interactions. It is crucial to reconstruct from these observables the properties of the neutrino which generated such event. Here we describe how to achieve this goal using Bayesian inference and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.
A diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos above $100,mathrm{TeV}$ has been observed at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Here we extend this analysis to probe the astrophysical flux down to $35,mathrm{TeV}$ and analyze its flavor composition by classifying events as showers or tracks. Taking advantage of lower atmospheric backgrounds for shower-like events, we obtain a shower-biased sample containing 129 showers and 8 tracks collected in three years from 2010 to 2013. We demonstrate consistency with the $(f_e:f_{mu}:f_tau)_oplusapprox(1:1:1)_oplus$ flavor ratio at Earth commonly expected from the averaged oscillations of neutrinos produced by pion decay in distant astrophysical sources. Limits are placed on non-standard flavor compositions that cannot be produced by averaged neutrino oscillations but could arise in exotic physics scenarios. A maximally track-like composition of $(0:1:0)_oplus$ is excluded at $3.3sigma$, and a purely shower-like composition of $(1:0:0)_oplus$ is excluded at $2.3sigma$.
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