Signature of light sterile neutrinos at IceCube

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential detection of light sterile neutrinos through resonant absorption features in the cosmogenic neutrino spectrum observed by IceCube, providing new bounds on sterile neutrino parameters.

Contribution

It investigates the impact of sterile neutrino self-interactions on the neutrino spectrum and proposes using IceCube data to constrain sterile neutrino properties.

Findings

IceCube can set bounds on sterile neutrino parameters

Resonant absorption dips relate to neutrino masses

Self-interactions could reconcile cosmological and laboratory results

Abstract

The MiniBooNe collaboration has recently reported evidence for a light sterile neutrino with large mixing angles thus corroborating the measurement by LSND twenty years ago. Such a state would be directly in conflict with Planck measurement of BBN $N_{eff}$ unless there is self-interaction in the sterile sector. Our objective is to investigate if such interactions could result in resonant absorption in the cosmogenic neutrino spectrum and its consequences for the IceCube experiment. We show that it is possible to give independent bounds on sterile neutrino parameter space from IceCube observations with the dips in the spectrum corresponding to the neutrino masses.