Searching for sterile neutrinos in ice

Soebur Razzaquea, A. Yu Smirnovb

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

36 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Oscillation interpretation of the results from the LSND, MiniBooNE and some other experiments requires existence of sterile neutrino with mass ∼ 1 eV and mixing with the active neutrinos Uμ02 ∼ (0.02 - 0.04). It has been realized some time ago that existence of such a neutrino affects significantly the uxes of atmospheric neutrinos in the TeV range which can be tested by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. In view of the first IceCube data release we have revisited the oscillations of high energy atmospheric neutrinos in the presence of one sterile neutrino. Properties of the oscillation probabilities are studied in details for various mixing schemes both analytically and numerically. The energy spectra and angular distributions of the Vμ-events have been computed for the simplest V s-mass, and Vs -Vμ mixing schemes and confronted with the IceCube data. An illustrative statistical analysis of the present data shows that in the Vs-mass mixing case the sterile neutrinos with parameters required by LSND/MiniBooNE can be excluded at about 3δ level. The Vs - Vμ mixing scheme, however, can not be ruled out with currently available IceCube data.

Original languageEnglish
Article number84
JournalJournal of High Energy Physics
Volume2011
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Neutrino Physics
  • Solar and Atmospheric Neutrinos

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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