Atmospheric neutrino oscillations and tau neutrinos in ice

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that IceCube Deep Core Array's cascade measurements can detect tau neutrino appearance from atmospheric neutrino oscillations, which is vital for distinguishing astrophysical neutrinos from background.

Contribution

It introduces a method to identify tau neutrinos in atmospheric oscillations using IceCube Deep Core's cascade data, highlighting its importance for astrophysical neutrino searches.

Findings

Cascade measurements can reveal tau neutrino appearance.

Tau neutrinos are an irreducible background in astrophysical neutrino detection.

The study emphasizes the importance of tau neutrino analysis in IceCube data.

Abstract

The main goal of the IceCube Deep Core Array is to search for neutrinos of astrophysical origins. Atmospheric neutrinos are commonly considered as a background for these searches. We show here that cascade measurements in the Ice Cube Deep Core Array can provide strong evidence for tau neutrino appearance in atmospheric neutrino oscillations. A careful study of these tau neutrinos is crucial, since they constitute an irreducible background for astrophysical neutrino detection.