Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations in IceCube

TL;DR

This paper reports the first significant detection of atmospheric neutrino oscillations using IceCube/DeepCore data, measuring oscillation parameters consistent with previous findings in a high-energy neutrino telescope.

Contribution

It presents the first detection of neutrino oscillations in a high-energy neutrino telescope and measures oscillation parameters using IceCube/DeepCore data.

Findings

Detected neutrino oscillations with >5σ significance.

Measured Δm²₃₂ ≈ 2.5×10⁻³ eV² and sin²2θ₃₂ > 0.92.

Results agree with world average values.

Abstract

We present the results of an analysis of data collected by IceCube/DeepCore in 2010-2011 resulting in the first significant detection of neutrino oscillations in a high-energy neutrino telescope. A low-energy muon neutrino sample (20-100 GeV) containing the oscillation signal was extracted from data collected by DeepCore. A high-energy muon neutrino sample (100 GeV -10 TeV) was extracted from IceCube data in order to constrain the systematic uncertainties. The non-oscillation hypothesis was rejected with more than $5\sigma$. We fitted the oscillation parameters $\Delta m^2_{23}$ and $\sin^22 \theta_{23}$ to these data samples. In a 2-flavor formalism we find $\Delta m^2_{23}= (2.5\pm0.6)\cdot10^{-3}$ eV$^2$ and $\sin^22 \theta_{23}>0.92$ while maximum mixing is favored. These results are in good agreement with the world average values.