Exploring a Non-Minimal Sterile Neutrino Model Involving Decay at IceCube and Beyond

TL;DR

This paper investigates how neutrino decay affects sterile neutrino phenomenology, especially in IceCube data, revealing that decay can significantly alter interpretations of high-energy neutrino observations.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism for visible neutrino decay involving sterile neutrinos and applies it to IceCube data, highlighting the impact of decay on sterile neutrino searches.

Findings

Decay can significantly alter IceCube sterile neutrino analysis

Neutrino lifetime constraints impact phenomenological interpretations

Decay effects are relevant for eV-scale sterile neutrino models

Abstract

We study the phenomenology of neutrino decay together with neutrino oscillations in the context of eV-scale sterile neutrinos. We review the formalism of visible neutrino decay in which one of the decay products is a neutrino that potentially can be observed. We apply the formalism developed for decay to the recent sterile neutrino search performed by IceCube with TeV neutrinos. We show that for $\nu_4$ lifetime $\tau_4/m_4 \lesssim 10^{-16} {\rm eV^{-1}s}$, the interpretation of the high-energy IceCube analysis can be significantly changed.