Detection of astrophysical tau neutrino candidates in IceCube
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Date
2022
Authors
Abbasi, R.
Ackermann, M.
Adams, J.
Aguilar, J.A.
Ahlers, M.
Ahrens, M.
Alispach, C.
Alves, A.A.
Amin, N.M.
Andeen, K.
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Journal article
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European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields, 2022; 82(11):1-15
Statement of Responsibility
R. Abbasi ... G. C. Hill ... A. Kyriacou ... A. Wallace ... B. J. Whelan ... et al. (IceCube Collaboration)
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Abstract
High-energy tau neutrinos are rarely produced in atmospheric cosmic-ray showers or at cosmic particle accelerators, but are expected to emerge during neutrino propagation over cosmic distances due to flavor mixing. When high energy tau neutrinos interact inside the IceCube detector, two spatially separated energy depositions may be resolved, the first from the charged current interaction and the second from the tau lepton decay. We report a novel analysis of 7.5 years of IceCube data that identifies two candidate tau neutrinos among the 60 “High-Energy Starting Events” (HESE) collected during that period. The HESE sample offers high purity, all-sky sensitivity, and distinct observational signatures for each neutrino flavor, enabling a new measurement of the flavor composition. The measured astrophysical neutrino flavor composition is consistent with expectations, and an astrophysical tau neutrino flux is indicated at 2.8σ significance.
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Published online: 15 November 2022
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© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecomm ons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Funded by SCOAP3. SCOAP3 supports the goals of the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development.