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Probing the PeV region in the astrophysical neutrino spectrum using vμ from the Southern sky
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Probing the PeV region in the astrophysical neutrino spectrum using vμ from the Southern sky

R. Abbasi, M. Ackermann, J. Adams, S. K. Agarwalla, J. A. Aguilar, M. Ahlers, J. M. Alameddine, N. M. Amin, K. Andeen, C. Arguelles, …
Physical review. D, v 112(1), 012022
25 Jul 2025
url
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.19776View
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Abstract

Astronomy & Astrophysics Physics, Particles & Fields Science & Technology Physical Sciences Physics
IceCube has observed a diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux over the energy region from a few TeV to a few PeV. At PeVenergies, the spectral shape is not yet well measured due to the low statistics of the data. This analysis probes the gap between 1 and 10 PeV by using high-energy downgoing muon neutrinos. To reject the large atmospheric muon background, two complementary techniques are combined. The first technique selects events with high stochasticity to reject atmospheric muon bundles whose stochastic energy losses are smoothed due to high muon multiplicity. The second technique vetoes atmospheric muons with the IceTop surface array. Using 9 yrs of data, we found two neutrino candidate events in the signal region, consistent with expectation from background, each with relatively high signal probabilities. A joint maximum likelihood estimation is performed using this sample and an independent 9.5-yr sample of tracks to measure the neutrino spectrum. A likelihood ratio test is done to compare the single power-law (SPL) vs SPL + cutoff hypothesis; the SPL + cutoff model is not significantly better than the SPL. High-energy astrophysical objects from four source catalogs are also checked around the direction of the two events. No significant coincidence was found.

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Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics, Particles & Fields
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