Two SK-I Neutrino Sources?

TL;DR

This study investigates potential differences in neutrino flux between weekdays and weekends in Super-Kamiokande-I data, revealing a significant flux reduction on Saturdays, suggesting possible external influences or sources affecting neutrino detection.

Contribution

The paper introduces a robust method to account for uneven live time distributions in neutrino flux analysis, demonstrating a significant weekday-weekend flux difference.

Findings

Significant neutrino flux difference between weekdays and weekends

Most notable flux decrease observed on Saturdays

Live time distribution does not affect the flux difference result

Abstract

A search for a neutrino flux difference between weekdays and weekend days was undertaken for the average week of the Super-Kamiokande-I (SK-I) Experiment, using the 5-day period version of the SK-I data taken from May 31st, 1996 to July 15th, 2001. Arbitrarily uneven distributions of live time during the run time periods were considered before rejecting the null hypothesis. Such live time distributions were built into a robust method that calculated time-weighted neutrino flux means. The purpose was to show that the calculated results were unaffected by any distribution of live time, and thus that live time had no role in rejecting the null hypothesis. A significant (p << 0.001) difference was found and the most obvious neutrino flux change from weekdays to weekend days can be summarized as follows: "Some neutrinos took the weekend off, especially on Saturday".