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Exploration of mass splitting and muon/tau mixing parameters for an eV-scale sterile neutrino with IceCube
Preprint   Open access

Exploration of mass splitting and muon/tau mixing parameters for an eV-scale sterile neutrino with IceCube

R Abbasi, M Ackermann, J Adams, S. K Agarwalla, J. A Aguilar, M Ahlers, J. M Alameddine, N. M Amin, K Andeen, C Argüelles, …
ArXiv.org
02 Jun 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2406.00905
url
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.00905View
Preprint (Author's original) Open arXiv.org - Non-exclusive license to distribute
url
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2406.00905View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Physics - High Energy Physics - Experiment
We present the first three-parameter fit to a 3+1 sterile neutrino model using 7.634 years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory on $\nu_\mu+\overline{\nu}_\mu$ charged-current interactions in the energy range 500-9976 GeV. Our analysis is sensitive to the mass-squared splitting between the heaviest and lightest mass state ($\Delta m_{41}^2$), the mixing matrix element connecting muon flavor to the fourth mass state ($|U_{\mu4}|^2$), and the element connecting tau flavor to the fourth mass state ($|U_{\tau4}|^2$). Predicted propagation effects in matter enhance the signature through a resonance as atmospheric neutrinos from the Northern Hemisphere traverse the Earth to the IceCube detector at the South Pole. The result is consistent with the no-sterile neutrino hypothesis with a probability of 4.3 %. Profiling the likelihood of each parameter yields the 90 % confidence levels: $ 2.4\,\mathrm{eV}^{2} < \Delta m_{41}^2 <9.6\,\mathrm{eV}^{2} $ , $0.0081 < |U_{\mu4}|^2 < 0.10$ , and $|U_{\tau4}|^2< 0.035$, which narrows the allowed parameter-space for $|U_{\tau4}|^2$. However, the primary result of this analysis is the first map of the 3+1 parameter space exploring the interdependence of $\Delta m_{41}^2$, $|U_{\mu4}|^2$, and $|U_{\tau4}|^2$.

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