Exploring New Propagation Scales With Galactic Neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how upcoming Galactic neutrino observations by IceCube and KM3NeT can detect new physics phenomena like quasi-Dirac neutrinos and neutrino decays over large propagation scales.

Contribution

It provides sensitivity estimates for detecting neutrino mass models through joint measurements by IceCube and KM3NeT, focusing on quasi-Dirac neutrinos and neutrino decays.

Findings

Sensitivity to mass-squared differences $ o 10^{-13.5}$ eV$^2$

Sensitivity to decay ratios $ o 10^{-12.3}$ eV$^2$

Global neutrino measurements can probe new physics signatures.

Abstract

The recent observation of high-energy Galactic neutrinos by IceCube allows for searches of new physics affecting neutrino propagation on scales of $O(10^9-10^{15})\,\mathrm{km/GeV}$ in distance over energy. We assess the sensitivity of upcoming measurements of Galactic neutrinos by IceCube and KM3NeT to such new phenomena. We focus on two scenarios: quasi-Dirac neutrinos and neutrino decays. In the quasi-Dirac scenario, we find that joint measurements by IceCube and KM3NeT are sensitive to the mass-squared differences $\delta m^2 \in \left(10^{-13.5}~\mathrm{eV^2}, 10^{-11.9}~\mathrm{eV^2}\right)$ at the $90\%$ confidence level. For neutrino decays, the same measurements are sensitive to mass over lifetime ratios $m / \tau > 10^{-12.3}~\mathrm{eV^2}$ at the same significance. Our results demonstrate that measurements of Galactic neutrinos by a global network of neutrino telescopes can probe signatures of neutrino mass models.