Visible inelasticity in starting tracks can statistically separate tau and muon neutrino events, yielding competitive sensitivity to the tau-to-muon flux ratio with current IceCube exposures.
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Measurements using the inelasticity distribution of multi-TeV neutrino interactions in IceCube
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abstract
Inelasticity--the fraction of a neutrino's energy transferred to hadrons--is a quantity of interest in the study of astrophysical and atmospheric neutrino interactions at multi-TeV energies with IceCube. In this work, a sample of contained neutrino interactions in IceCube is obtained from 5 years of data and classified as 2650 tracks and 965 cascades. Tracks arise predominantly from charged-current $\nu_{\mu}$ interactions, and we demonstrate that we can reconstruct their energy and inelasticity. The inelasticity distribution is found to be consistent with the calculation of Cooper-Sarkar et al. across the energy range from $\sim$ 1 TeV to $\sim$ 100 TeV. Along with cascades from neutrinos of all flavors, we also perform a fit over the energy, zenith angle, and inelasticity distribution to characterize the flux of astrophysical and atmospheric neutrinos. The energy spectrum of diffuse astrophysical neutrinos is well-described by a power-law in both track and cascade samples, and a best-fit index $\gamma=2.62\pm0.07$ is found in the energy range from 3.5 TeV to 2.6 PeV. Limits are set on the astrophysical flavor composition that are compatible with a ratio of $\left(\frac{1}{3}:\frac{1}{3}:\frac{1}{3}\right)_{\oplus}$. Exploiting the distinct inelasticity distribution of $\nu_{\mu}$ and $\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$ interactions, the atmospheric $\nu_{\mu}$ to $\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$ flux ratio in the energy range from 770 GeV to 21 TeV is found to be $0.77^{+0.44}_{-0.25}$ times the calculation by Honda et al. Lastly, the inelasticity distribution is also sensitive to neutrino charged-current charm production. The data are consistent with a leading-order calculation, with zero charm production excluded at $91\%$ confidence level. Future analyses of inelasticity distributions may probe new physics that affects neutrino interactions both in and beyond the Standard Model.
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Visible inelasticity as a probe of tau flavor content of astrophysical neutrinos
Visible inelasticity in starting tracks can statistically separate tau and muon neutrino events, yielding competitive sensitivity to the tau-to-muon flux ratio with current IceCube exposures.
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Are neutrinos Majorana? Fixed-target and high-energy astrophysical searches decide
Correlated HNL discovery at SHiP and flavor ratio shifts in astrophysical neutrinos at telescopes would establish neutrinos as Majorana fermions.
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Astrophysical bounds on the high-energy evolution of neutrino mixing
High-energy astrophysical neutrinos can constrain the running of neutrino mixing parameters with energy, with future multi-detector setups forecast to set strong bounds despite astrophysical uncertainties.
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Atmospheric Neutrino Charged-Current Interactions at Large Liquid-Scintillator Detectors: I. Physics of Neutrino-Antineutrino Discrimination
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Lepton interactions from GeV to EeV
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Particle Astrophysics with High and Ultrahigh Energy Neutrinos
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