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Methods and stability tests associated with the sterile neutrino search using improved high-energy $u_\mu$ event reconstruction in IceCube
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Methods and stability tests associated with the sterile neutrino search using improved high-energy $u_\mu$ event reconstruction in IceCube

IceCube Collaboration, R Abbasi, M Ackermann, J Adams, S. K Agarwalla, J. A Aguilar, M Ahlers, J. M Alameddine, N. M Amin, K Andeen, …
13 May 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2405.08077
url
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2405.08077View
Preprint (Author's original) Open arXiv.org - Non-exclusive license to distribute

Abstract

Physics - High Energy Physics - Experiment Physics - High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
We provide supporting details for the search for a 3+1 sterile neutrino using data collected over eleven years at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The analysis uses atmospheric muon-flavored neutrinos from 0.5 to 100\, TeV that traverse the Earth to reach the IceCube detector, and finds a best-fit point at $\sin^2(2\theta_{24}) = 0.16$ and $\Delta m^{2}_{41} = 3.5$ eV$^2$ with a goodness-of-fit p-value of 12\% and consistency with the null hypothesis of no oscillations to sterile neutrinos with a p-value of 3.1\%. Several improvements were made over past analyses, which are reviewed in this article, including upgrades to the reconstruction and the study of sources of systematic uncertainty. We provide details of the fit quality and discuss stability tests that split the data for separate samples, comparing results. We find that the fits are consistent between split data sets.

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