On the robustness of IceCube's bound on sterile neutrinos in the presence of non-standard interactions

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the claim that non-standard neutrino interactions can relax IceCube's bounds on sterile neutrinos, demonstrating that such claims are artifacts and that the tension remains or worsens.

Contribution

The study refutes previous claims by showing that non-standard interactions do not alleviate IceCube's constraints on sterile neutrinos, emphasizing the importance of dataset energy cuts.

Findings

Non-standard interactions do not relax IceCube bounds.

Energy cuts in datasets influence the perceived tension.

Reconciliation claims are artifacts of dataset selection.

Abstract

The mixing parameters of sterile neutrino(s) preferred by the MiniBooNE and LNSD experiments are in strong tension with the exclusion limit from the IceCube experiment. Recently it has been claimed that by considering the non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) in addition to the sterile neutrino, the IceCube's limit can be relaxed and the tension can be reconciled; a baroque scenario as it has been called. We will show that this claim is just an artifact originating from the energy cuts of the chosen datasets. Contrary to the claim, by turning on the NSI and fixing the NSI parameters to the proposed values, not only the IceCube's limit on sterile neutrino cannot be alleviated, but in fact the tension will be aggravated. The reconciliation, more appropriately, can be called surreal.