Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions in the mu-tau sector

TL;DR

This paper investigates how non-standard neutrino interactions in the mu-tau sector affect muon detection rates in atmospheric neutrino experiments, highlighting the importance of the interaction sign and its degeneracy with neutrino mass hierarchy.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the impact of mu-tau sector non-standard interactions on atmospheric neutrino observations, focusing on the sign dependence and degeneracy issues.

Findings

Effects depend strongly on the sign of Epsilon_MuTau

Degeneracy exists between interaction effects and mass hierarchy

Analytic model clarifies parameter space where effects are maximized

Abstract

We discuss the effects of non-standard neutrino interactions on muon rates in high statistics atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments like IceCube DeepCore. We concentrate on the mu-tau sector, which is presently the least constrained. It is shown that the magnitude of the effects depends strongly on the sign of the Epsilon_MuTau parameter describing this non-standard interactions. A simple analytic model is used to understand the parameter space where differences between the two signs are maximized. We discuss how this effect is partially degenerate with changing the neutrino mass hierarchy, as well as how this degeneracy could be lifted.