Sterile neutrinos in the light of IceCube

TL;DR

This paper uses IceCube-59 data to constrain eV-scale sterile neutrinos, highlighting the challenges in definitively ruling out sterile neutrino hints due to complex mixing angle dependencies.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of sterile neutrino constraints using IceCube data, emphasizing the limitations in excluding sterile neutrino signals.

Findings

Constraints on sterile neutrino parameters are established.

Current data cannot fully exclude sterile neutrino hints.

Different mixing angles affect the analysis sensitivity.

Abstract

We determine constraints on parameters of a single eV-scale light neutrino using IceCube-59 data. Particular emphasis is put on the question whether such an analysis can rule out sterile neutrino hints. While important complementary information is provided, the different dependence on the various sterile neutrino mixing angles makes it currently not possible to fully exclude short baseline appearance results or sterile neutrinos in general.