Sterile Neutrinos and IceCube

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential existence of sterile neutrinos and how their presence could be detected through resonant oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos observed by IceCube, addressing anomalies in neutrino experiments.

Contribution

It explores the impact of sterile neutrinos on atmospheric neutrino oscillations and proposes IceCube as a detector for their signatures.

Findings

Resonant oscillations of TeV atmospheric neutrinos in the presence of sterile neutrinos.

Altered zenith-energy distribution patterns in IceCube data.

Potential explanation for neutrino anomalies via sterile neutrino models.

Abstract

Although the framework for oscillations of the three neutrino flavors in the Standard Model has been convincingly established, indications persist that it may be incomplete. Challenges are coming from the LSND and MiniBooNe short-baseline experiments, from the neutrino sources used in the Gallex and Sage solar neutrino experiments and, more recently,from an a-posteriori analysis of reactor neutrino experiments. One way to accommodate the reported "anomalies", if real, is to introduce one or more sterile neutrinos in the mass range $\delta m^2 \sim 1 eV^2$. TeV atmospheric neutrinos propagating through the Earth undergo resonant oscillations in the presence of sterile neutrinos; a clear signature in a neutrino telescope like IceCube is the the change in shape of the zenith-energy distribution of the atmospheric neutrinos.