IceCube's astrophysical neutrino energy spectrum from CPT violation

TL;DR

This paper proposes that CPT violation in neutrino interactions can explain IceCube's observed neutrino spectrum, including the low-energy excess and the absence of a high-energy cutoff, predicting observable Glashow resonance events.

Contribution

It introduces a CPT violation model that unifies the neutrino spectrum observations and explains the low-energy excess through superluminal neutrino decay.

Findings

HESE data fit by a single E^{-2} flux with CPT violation

Low-energy excess explained by superluminal neutrino decay

Prediction of Glashow resonance events in future observations

Abstract

The 6-year dataset of high-energy starting events (HESE) at IceCube indicates a spectrum of astrophysical neutrinos much softer than expected from the Fermi shock acceleration mechanism. On the other hand, IceCube's up-going muon neutrino dataset and Fermi-LAT's gamma-ray spectrum point to an $E^{-2}$ neutrino spectrum. If the HESE data above 200 TeV are fit with the latter flux, an excess at lower energies ensues, which then suggests a multicomponent spectrum. We show that the HESE dataset can be explained by a single $E^{-2}$ power-law neutrino flux from a muon-damped $p\gamma$ source if neutrino interactions are modified by CPT violation. The low-energy excess is naturally explained by the pileup of events from superluminal neutrino decay, and there is no cutoff at high energies due to the contribution of subluminal antineutrinos. The best-fit scenario with CPT violation also predicts the observation of Glashow resonance events in the near future.