Determinations of flavor ratios and flavor transitions of astrophysical neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of flavor discrimination in neutrino telescopes to understand the source flavor ratios and transition mechanisms of astrophysical neutrinos, proposing a model-independent parametrization for flavor transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a model-independent framework for analyzing neutrino flavor transitions, enhancing the ability to probe astrophysical neutrino sources and propagation effects.

Findings

Reconstruction of source flavor ratios is feasible.

Proposed a model-independent parametrization for flavor transitions.

Applicable to various neutrino oscillation scenarios.

Abstract

We argue that an effective flavor discrimination in neutrino telescopes is the key to probe the flavor ratios of astrophysical neutrinos at the source and flavor transition mechanisms of these neutrinos during their propagations from the source to the Earth. We first discuss how well one can reconstruct the flavor ratios of astrophysical neutrinos at the source. We then discuss how to probe flavor transition mechanisms of propagating astrophysical neutrinos. In this regard, we propose a model independent parametrization for neutrino flavor transitions, with the neutrino oscillation as a special case.