Probing new physics with high-multiplicity events: UHE neutrinos at air-shower detector arrays

TL;DR

This paper explores how ultra-high-energy neutrino interactions with Earth's atmosphere could produce high-multiplicity events, offering new methods for detecting phenomena like sphalerons and microscopic black holes in air-shower experiments.

Contribution

It proposes strategic approaches for detecting and analyzing high-multiplicity events from UHE neutrino interactions in air-shower detectors, highlighting potential new physics signatures.

Findings

High-multiplicity events can be distinctive signatures of new physics.

Strategies are proposed for identifying sphaleron and black hole events.

Focus on UHE neutrino interactions at energies above 10^9 GeV.

Abstract

Semi-classical processes such as production and decay of electroweak sphaleron in the Standard Model and also microscopic black hole in low scale gravity scenario typically involve large number of particles in final states. These large multiplicities can be distinctively seen in collisions of Ultra-high-energy (UHE) neutrinos with $E_\nu \geq 10^9~\text{GeV}$ and nucleons in the atmosphere of the Earth. Focusing on air-shower detector array experiments including Telescope Array Experiment (TA), Pierre-Auger Observatory (Auger), we propose strategic ways to discover and analyze such events.