Detection of astrophysical tau neutrino candidates in IceCube
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10052_2022_Article_10795.pdf
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Author(s)
Abbasi, R.
Ackermann, M.
Adams, J.
Aguilar, J. A.
Ahlers, M.
Ahrens, M.
Alispach, C.
Alves, A. A.
Amin, N. M.
Andeen, K.
Date Issued
November 15, 2022
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Citation
The European Physical Journal C. 2022 Nov 15;82(11):1031
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Abstract
High-energy tau neutrinos are rarely produced in atmospheric cosmic-ray showers or at cosmic particle accelerators, but are expected to emerge during neutrino propagation over cosmic distances due to flavor mixing. When high energy tau neutrinos interact inside the IceCube detector, two spatially separated energy depositions may be resolved, the first from the charged current interaction and the second from the tau lepton decay. We report a novel analysis of 7.5 years of IceCube data that identifies two candidate tau neutrinos among the 60 “High-Energy Starting Events” (HESE) collected during that period. The HESE sample offers high purity, all-sky sensitivity, and distinct observational signatures for each neutrino flavor, enabling a new measurement of the flavor composition. The measured astrophysical neutrino flavor composition is consistent with expectations, and an astrophysical tau neutrino flux is indicated at 2.8
$$\sigma $$
σ
significance.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10795-y
