Search for Astrophysical Tau Neutrinos with an Improved Double Pulse Method

TL;DR

This paper develops an improved double pulse detection method in IceCube to identify astrophysical tau neutrinos above 100 TeV, aiming to enhance neutrino source searches and neutrino physics insights.

Contribution

The work introduces an enhanced double pulse technique for tau neutrino identification and provides new flux constraints based on 7.5 years of IceCube data.

Findings

Constraints on astrophysical tau neutrino flux established

Effective identification of tau neutrinos above 100 TeV demonstrated

Enhanced detection method improves sensitivity for tau neutrino searches

Abstract

Tau neutrino identification with the IceCube experiment would open new windows to neutrino physics as well as enable novel searches for cosmic neutrino sources. This work aims at a identification of tau neutrinos with astrophysical origin at energies above 100TeV. For identification, we search for a double pulse structure in the signal of one of IceCubes Digital Optical Modules originating from a tau neutrino interaction and a subsequent tau decay within the detector. In this work, we present constraints on the tau neutrino flux based on an event sample with a livetime of about 7.5 years of IceCube data.