Searches for Sterile Neutrinos with the IceCube Detector

Abstract

The IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole has measured the atmospheric muon neutrino spectrum as a function of zenith angle and energy in the approximate 320 GeV to 20 TeV range, to search for the oscillation signatures of light sterile neutrinos. No evidence for anomalous ν[subscript μ] or [bar over v][subscript μ] disappearance is observed in either of two independently developed analyses, each using one year of atmospheric neutrino data. New exclusion limits are placed on the parameter space of the 3+1 model, in which muon antineutrinos experience a strong Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein-resonant oscillation. The exclusion limits extend to sin[superscript 2]2θ[subscript 24] ≤ 0.02 at Δm[superscript 2]∼0.3 eV[superscript 2] at the 90% confidence level. The allowed region from global analysis of appearance experiments, including LSND and MiniBooNE, is excluded at approximately the 99% confidence level for the global best-fit value of |U[subscript e4}]|[superscript 2].