# Probing strong dynamics with cosmic neutrinos

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how high-energy astrophysical neutrinos observed by IceCube can be used to probe strong interaction dynamics at TeV energies, providing measurements of the neutrino-nucleon cross section and testing QCD predictions.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel method to measure the neutrino-nucleon cross section at TeV energies using IceCube data, including both charged-current and neutral-current interactions in the analysis.

## Key findings

- IceCube data constrains the neutrino-nucleon cross section at ~1 TeV.
- Future IceCube-Gen2 will enable precise measurements of strong interaction dynamics.
- First likelihood analysis considers both charged-current and neutral-current contributions.

## Abstract

IceCube has observed 80 astrophysical neutrino candidates in the energy range 0.02 < E_\nu/PeV < 2. Deep inelastic scattering of these neutrinos with nucleons on Antarctic ice sheet probe center-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s} \sim$ 1 TeV. By comparing the rates for two classes of observable events, any departure from the benchmark (perturbative QCD) neutrino-nucleon cross section can be constrained. Using the projected sensitivity of South Pole next generation neutrino telescope we show that this facility will provide a unique probe of strong interaction dynamics. In particular, we demonstrate that the high-energy high-statistics data sample to be recorded by IceCube-Gen2 in the very near future will deliver a direct measurement of the neutrino-nucleon cross section at $\sqrt{s} \sim 1$ TeV, with a precision comparable to perturbative QCD informed by HERA data. We also use IceCube data to extract the neutrino-nucleon cross section at $\sqrt{s} \sim 1$ TeV through a likelihood analysis, considering (for the first time) both the charged-current and neutral-current contributions as free parameters of the likelihood function.