Invisible decays of ultra-high energy neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper explores the possibility that ultra-high energy neutrinos from gamma-ray bursts decay before detection, which could explain the lower-than-expected neutrino flux observed by IceCube and has implications for new physics such as majoron-emitting double beta decay.

Contribution

It demonstrates the phenomenological consistency and theoretical plausibility of neutrino decay as an explanation for IceCube's neutrino flux discrepancy.

Findings

Neutrino decay can account for the lower neutrino flux observed.

Neutrino decay hypothesis is phenomenologically consistent.

Potential link to observable neutrinoless double beta decay with majorons.

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are expected to provide a source of ultra high energy cosmic rays, accompanied with potentially detectable neutrinos at neutrino telescopes. Recently, IceCube has set an upper bound on this neutrino flux well below theoretical expectation. We investigate whether this mismatch between expectation and observation can be due to neutrino decay. We demosntrate the phenomenological consistency and theoretical plausibility of the neutrino decay hypothesis. A potential implication is the observability of majoron-emitting neutrinoless double beta decay.