Probing a Four Flavour vis-a-vis Three Flavour Neutrino Mixing for UHE Neutrino Signals at a 1 ${\rm Km}^2$ Detector

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the presence of a sterile neutrino affects ultra-high-energy neutrino signals at a large detector, highlighting potential observable differences from the standard three-flavor model.

Contribution

It introduces a four-flavor neutrino mixing model and compares predicted detector yields with the traditional three-flavor scenario, proposing a method to detect sterile neutrinos.

Findings

Significant differences in muon and shower yields between three and four flavor models.

Potential to use UHE neutrino flux measurements to probe sterile neutrino existence.

Provides estimations relevant for detectors like ICECUBE.

Abstract

We consider a four flavour scenario for the neutrinos where an extra sterile neutrino is introduced with the three families of active neutrinos and study the deviation from three flavour scenario in the ultra high energy (UHE) regime. We calculate the possible muon and shower yields at a 1 Km$^2$ detector such as ICECUBE for these neutrinos from distant UHE sources namely Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) etc. Similar estimations for muon and shower yields are also obtained for three flavour case. Comparing the two results we find considerable differences of the yields for these two cases. This can be useful for probing the existence of a fourth sterile component using UHE neutrino flux.