We show that the measurements of 10 GeV atmospheric neutrinos by an upcoming array of densely packed phototubes buried deep inside the IceCube detector at the South Pole can be used to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy for values of sin^2(2theta13) close to the present bound, if the hierarchy is normal. These results are obtained for an exposure of 100 Mton years and systematic uncertainties up to 10%.
The main goal of the IceCube Deep Core Array is to search for neutrinos of astrophysical origins. Atmospheric neutrinos are commonly considered as a background for these searches. We show here that cascade measurements in the Ice Cube Deep Core Array can provide strong evidence for tau neutrino appearance in atmospheric neutrino oscillations. A careful study of these tau neutrinos is crucial, since they constitute an irreducible background for astrophysical neutrino detection.
We demonstrate that atmospheric neutrino data accumulated with the AMANDA and the partially deployed IceCube experiments constrain the allowed parameter space for a hypothesized fourth sterile neutrino beyond the reach of a combined analysis of all other experiments. We also illustrate the sensitivity of the completed IceCube detector, that is now taking data, to the parameter space of 3+1 model.
IceCube, a future km^3 antarctic ice Cherenkov neutrino telescope, is highly sensitive to a galactic supernova (SN) neutrino burst. The Cherenkov light corresponding to the total energy deposited by the SN neutrinos in the ice can be measured relative to background fluctuations with a statistical precision much better than 1%. If the SN is viewed through the Earth, the matter effect on neutrino oscillations can change the signal by more than 5%, depending on the flavor-dependent source spectra and the neutrino mixing parameters. Therefore, IceCube together with another high-statistics experime…
High-energy atmospheric neutrinos observed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory are extremely sensitive probes of Lorentz violation (LV). Here we report the result of analyzing two years of IceCube data in the search for LV. This analysis places some of the strongest constraints on LV when considering high-dimensional operators.
The main goal of the IceCube Deep Core Array is to search for neutrinos of astrophysical origins. Atmospheric neutrinos are commonly considered as a background for these searches. We show that the very high statistics atmospheric neutrino data can be used to obtain precise measurements of the main oscillation parameters.
This paper investigates the physics reach of the IceCube neutrino detector when it will have collected a data set of order one million atmospheric neutrinos with energies in the 0.1 \sim 10^4 TeV range. The paper consists of three parts. We first demonstrate how to simulate the detector performance using relatively simple analytic methods. Because of the high energies of the neutrinos, their oscillations, propagation in the Earth and regeneration due to τdecay must be treated in a coherent way. We set up the formalism to do this and discuss the implications. In a final section we apply the met…
Non-standard interactions in the propagation of neutrinos in matter can lead to significant deviations from expectations within the standard neutrino oscillation framework and atmospheric neutrino detectors have been considered to set constraints. However, most previous works have focused on relatively low-energy atmospheric neutrino data. Here, we consider the one-year high-energy through-going muon data in IceCube, which has been already used to search for light sterile neutrinos, to constrain new interactions in the $μτ$-sector. In our analysis we include several systematic uncertainties on…
The predictions for the atmospheric neutrino flux at high energies strongly depend on the contribution of prompt neutrinos, which are determined by the production of charmed meson in the atmosphere at very forward rapidities. In this paper we estimate the related cross sections taking into account the presence of an intrinsic charm (IC) component in the proton wave function and the QCD dynamics modified by the onset of saturation effects. The impact on the predictions for the prompt neutrino flux is investigated assuming different values for the probability to find the IC in the nucleon. Compa…
Atmospheric muons play an important role in underwater/ice neutrino detectors. In this paper, a parameterisation of the flux of single and multiple muon events, their lateral distribution and of their energy spectrum is presented. The kinematics parameters were modelled starting from a full Monte Carlo simulation of the interaction of primary cosmic rays with atmospheric nuclei; secondary muons reaching the sea level were propagated in the deep water. The parametric formulas are valid for a vertical depth of 1.5-5 km w.e. and up to 85 deg for the zenith angle, and can be used as input for a fa…
The recent high-statistics high-energy atmospheric neutrino data collected by IceCube open a new window to probe new physics scenarios that are suppressed in lower energy neutrino experiments. In this paper we analyze the IceCube atmospheric neutrino data to constrain the Violation of Equivalence Principle (VEP) in the framework of three neutrinos with non-universal gravitational couplings. In this scenario the effect of VEP on neutrino oscillation probabilities can be parametrized by two parameters $Δγ_{21}\equiv γ_2-γ_1$ and $Δγ_{31}\equiv γ_3-γ_1$, where $γ_i$'s denote the coupling of neutr…
Lorentz invariance is a fundamental symmetry of spacetime underpinning the Standard Model (SM) and our understanding of high-energy phenomena in particle physics. However, beyond the quantum gravity scale, we expect the SM to be replaced with a more fundamental, covariant theory giving a quantum description of gravity. The effective theory arising from this theory can break Lorentz invariance and thus predicts observables that exhibit low-energy manifestations of Lorentz violation. In particular, these observables could be a subleading contribution to neutrino oscillations and could therefore …
We study oscillations of the high energy atmospheric neutrinos in the Earth into sterile neutrinos with the eV-scale mass. The MSW resonance and parametric enhancement of the $\barν_μ\to\barν_s$ oscillations lead to distortion of the zenith angle distribution of the muon-track events which can be observed by IceCube. Due to matter effect, the IceCube signal depends not only on the mixing element $U_{μ4}$ relevant for LSND and MiniBooNE but also on $U_{τ4}$ and the CP-violating phase $δ_{24}$. We show that the case with $U_{τ4} = δ_{24} = 0$ leads to the weakest IceCube signal and therefore sho…
We discuss the neutrino mass hierarchy determination with atmospheric neutrinos in PINGU (Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade), based on a simulation with the GLoBES software including the full three flavor framework and parameter degeneracy, and we compare it to long-baseline experiment options. We demonstrate that the atmospheric mass hierarchy sensitivity depends on the achievable experiment properties and we identify the main targets for optimization, whereas the impact of a large number of tested systematical errors turns out to be small. Depending on the values of theta_23, delta, …
At very-high energies (100 TeV - 1 PeV), the small value of Bjorken-x ($\le10^{-3}-10^{-7}$) at which the parton distribution functions are evaluated makes the calculation of charm quark production very difficult. The charm quark has mass ($\sim$1.5$\pm$0.2 GeV) significantly above the $Λ$$_{QCD}$ scale ($\sim$200 MeV), and therefore its production is perturbatively calculable. However, the uncertainty in the data and the calculations cannot exclude some smaller non-perturbative contribution. To evaluate the prompt neutrino flux, one needs to know the charm production cross-section in pN -> c$…
We discuss the possibility for matter effects in the three-neutrino oscillations of the atmospheric nu_e (bar{nu}_e) and nu_mu (bar{nu}_mu), driven by one neutrino mass squared difference, |Delta m2_{31}| >> Delta m2_{21}, to be observable under appropriate conditions. We derive predictions for the Nadir angle (theta_n) dependence of the ratio N_mu/N_e of the rates of the mu-like and e-like multi-GeV events which is particularly sensitive to the Earth matter effects in the atmospheric neutrino oscillations, and thus to the values of sin2{theta_{13}} and sin2{theta_{23}}, and also to the type o…
The Dirac leptonic CP phase δ_CP is one of the crucial unknown parameters in neutrino oscillation physics. In this paper we explore the possibility of using low energy atmospheric neutrino events to probe δ_CP . We show that at sub GeV energies, when the events are binned as a function of the energy and direction of the final state leptons, a consistent distinction between various true δ_CP values is obtained. We also show that at these energies there is no sensitivity to the mass ordering/hierarchy, so that δ_CP can be measured without hierarchy ambiguity. In addition a preliminary \c{hi}^2 a…
Large mass ice/water Cherenkov experiments, optimized to detect low energy (1-20 GeV) atmospheric neutrinos, have the potential to discriminate between normal and inverted neutrino mass hierarchies. The sensitivity depends on several model and detector parameters, such as the neutrino flux profile and normalization, the Earth density profile, the oscillation parameter uncertainties, and the detector effective mass and resolution. A proper evaluation of the mass hierarchy discrimination power requires a robust statistical approach. In this work, the Toy Monte Carlo, based on an extended unbinne…
Exploring Long-Range Interactions in the Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations at IceCube DeepCore
Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Sainik School Post, Bhubaneswar 751005, India（印度物理研究所）；Department of Physics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh 202002, India（阿利加尔穆斯林大学物理系）
We examine the possibility of determining the neutrino mass hierarchy in the limit θ_{13} = 0 using atmospheric neutrinos as the source. In this limit, in which θ_{13} driven matter effects are absent, independent measurements of Δ_{31} and Δ_{32} can, in principle, lead to hierarchy determination. Since the difference between these two is Δ_{21}, one needs an experimental arrangement where Δ_{21} L/E \gtrsim 1 can be achieved. This condition can be satisfied by atmospheric neutrinos since they have a large range of energies and baselines. In spite of this, we find that hierarchy determination…
We study the neutrino mass hierarchy at the magnetized Iron CALorimeter (ICAL) detector at India-based Neutrino Observatory with atmospheric neutrino events generated by the Monte Carlo event generator Nuance. We judicially choose the observables so that the possible systematic uncertainties can be reduced. The resolution as a function of both energy and zenith angle simultaneously is obtained for neutrinos and anti-neutrinos separately from thousand years un-oscillated atmospheric neutrino events at ICAL to migrate number of events from neutrino energy and zenith angle bins to muon energy and…
We have studied the mass hierarchy with atmospheric neutrinos considering the muon energy and zenith angle of the event at the magnetized iron calorimeter detector. For $χ^2$ analysis we have migrated the number of events from neutrino energy and zenith angle bins to muon energy and zenith angle bins using the two-dimensional energy-angle correlated resolution functions. The binning of data is made in two-dimensional grids of $\log_{10} E - L^{0.4}$ plane to get a better reflection of the oscillation pattern in the $χ^2$ analysis. Then the $χ^2$ is marginalized considering all possible systema…
We give predictions for the up-down asymmetry in the Nadir angle dependence of the ratio Nmu/Ne of the rates of the mu-like and e-like multi-GeV events measured in water-Cerenkov detectors (Super-Kamiokande, etc.) in the case of 3-neutrino oscillations of the atmospheric nu_e (antinu_e) and nu_mu (antinu_mu), driven by one neutrino mass squared difference, |Delta m^2_{atm}| = |Delta m^2_{31}| ~ (2.0 - 3.0) 10^{-3} eV^2 >> Delta m^2_{21} = Delta m^2_{sol}. This ratio is particularly sensitive to the Earth matter effects in the atmospheric neutrino oscillations, and thus to the values of sin^2(t…
Recently the atmospheric muon spectra at high energies were reconstructed for two ranges of zenith angles, basing on the events collected with the IceCube detector. These measurements reach high energies at which the contribution to atmospheric muon fluxes from decays of short-lived hadrons is expected. Latest IceCube measurements of the high-energy atmospheric muon spectrum indicate the presence of prompt muon component at energies above 500 TeV. In this work, the atmospheric conventional muon flux in the energy range 10 GeV - 10 PeV is calculated using a set of hadronic models in combination…
The recent discovery by the Daya-Bay and RENO experiments, that θ_{13} is nonzero and relatively large, significantly impacts existing experiments and the planning of future facilities. In many scenarios, the nonzero value of θ_{13} implies that θ_{23} is likely to be different from π/4. Additionally, large detectors will be sensitive to matter effects on the oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos, making it possible to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and the octant of θ_{23}. We show that a 50 kT magnetized liquid argon neutrino detector can ascertain the mass hierarchy with a significan…
Neutrino mass hierarchy can be measured in atmospheric neutrino experiments through the observation of earth matter effects. Magnetized iron calorimeters have been shown to be good in this regard due to their charge identification capabilities. The charged current interaction of $ν_μ$ in this detector, produces a muon track and a hadron shower. The direction of the muon track can be measured very accurately. We show the improvement expected in the reach of this class of experiments to the neutrino mass hierarchy, as we improve the muon energy resolution and the muon reconstruction efficiency. …
We show that for long-baseline experiments using a Mt water Cerenkov detector atmospheric neutrino data provide a powerful method to resolve parameter degeneracies. In particular, the combination of long-baseline and atmospheric data increases significantly the sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy and the octant of $θ_{23}$. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility to use $μ$-like atmospheric neutrino data from a big magnetized iron calorimeter to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy.
We study the problem of determination of the sign of Delta m^2_{31}, or the neutrino mass hierarchy, through observations of atmospheric neutrinos in future detectors. We consider two proposed detector types : (a) Megaton sized water Cerenkov detectors, which can measure the survival rates of nu_μ+ \barν_μand nu_e + \barν_e and (b) 100 kton sized magnetized iron detectors, which can measure the survival rates of ν_μand \barν_μ. For energies and path-lengths relevant to atmospheric neutrinos, these rates obtain significant matter contributions from P_{μe}, P_{μμ} and P_{ee}, leading to an appre…
Among the information provided by high energy neutrinos, a promising possibility is to analyze the effects of a Violation of Equivalence Principle (VEP) on neutrino oscillations. We analyze the IceCube data on atmospheric neutrino fluxes under the assumption of a VEP and obtain updated constraints on the parameter space with the benchmark choice that neutrinos with different masses couple with different strengths to the gravitational field. In this case we find that the VEP parameters times the local gravitational potential at Earth can be constrained at the level of $10^{-27}$. We show that t…
We explore the potential offered by large-mass Liquid Argon detectors for determination of the sign of Delta m_{31}^2, or the neutrino mass hierarchy, through interactions of atmospheric neutrinos. We give results for a 100 kT sized magnetized detector which provides separate sensitivity to ν_μ, \barν_μand, over a limited energy range, to ν_e, \barν_e.We also discuss the sensitivity for the unmagnetized version of such a detector. After including the effect of smearing in neutrino energy and direction and incorporating the relevant statistical,theoretical and systematic errors, we perform a bi…
High-energy neutrinos from decays of mesons, produced in collisions of cosmic ray particles with air nuclei, form unavoidable background for detection of astrophysical neutrinos. More precise calculations of the high-energy neutrino spectrum are required since measurements in the IceCube experiment reach the intriguing energy region where a contribution of the prompt neutrinos and/or astrophysical ones should be discovered. Basing on the referent hadronic models QGSJET II-03, SIBYLL 2.1, we calculate high-energy spectra, both of the muon and electron atmospheric neutrinos, averaged over zenith…
It is by now established that neutrinos mix, have (different) non-zero masses, and therefore oscillate. The oscillation parameters themselves, however, are not all well-known. An open problem is that of the neutrino mass hierarchy. We study the possibility of determining the neutrino mass hierarchy with atmospheric neutrinos using an iron calorimeter detector capable of charge identification such as the proposed MONOLITH and ICAL/INO detectors. We find that such detectors are sensitive to the sign of the mass-squared difference, δ_{32} = m_3^2 - m_2^2, provided the as-yet unknown mixing angle …
The possibility to determine the type of neutrino mass hierarchy by studying atmospheric neutrino oscillations with a detector capable to distinguish between neutrino and antineutrino events, such as magnetized iron calorimeters, is considered. We discuss how the ability to distinguish between the neutrino mass spectrum with normal and inverted hierarchy depends on detector characteristics like neutrino energy and direction resolutions or charge miss-identification, and on the systematical uncertainties related to the atmospheric neutrino fluxes. We show also how the neutrino mass hierarchy de…
The neutrino mass hierarchy, presently unknown, is a powerful discriminator among various classes of unification theories. We show that the $ν_μ + \barν_μ$ survival rate in atmospheric events can provide a novel method of determining the hierarchy in megaton water Cerenkov detectors. For pathlength and energy ranges relevant to atmospheric neutrinos,this rate obtains significant matter sensitive variations not only from resonant matter effects in $P_{μe}$ but also from those in $P_{μτ}$. We calculate the expected muon event rates in the case of matter oscillations with both natural and inverte…
The potential of future high statistics atmospheric neutrino experiments is considered, having in mind currently discussed huge detectors of various technologies (water Cerekov, magnetized iron, liquid Argon). I focus on the possibility to use atmospheric data to determine the octant of $θ_{23}$ and the neutrino mass hierarchy. The sensitivity to the $θ_{23}$-octant of atmospheric neutrinos is competitive (or even superior) to long-baseline experiments. I discuss the ideal properties of a fictitious atmospheric neutrino detector to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy.
We study the possibility to perform neutrino oscillation tomography and to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy in kilometer-scale ice Cerenkov detectors by means of the theta13-driven matter effects which occur during the propagation of atmospheric neutrinos deep through the Earth. We consider the ongoing IceCube/DeepCore neutrino observatory and future planned extensions, such as the PINGU detector, which has a lower energy threshold. Our simulations include the impact of marginalization over the neutrino oscillation parameters and a fully correlated systematic uncertainty on the total numb…
A comprehensive formalism for the description of neutrino oscillations in the Earth in a general scheme with three massive neutrinos and the mass hierarchy m_1<<m_2<<m_3 is presented. Using this formalism, which is valid both in vacuum and in a medium, the matter effect on the oscillations of low-energy neutrinos is discussed, pointing out the existence of very long oscillations which are independent of the neutrino masses and the neutrino energy, and are very sensitive to the matter density along the neutrino trajectory. As an example of application of the formulation, a fit of the Kamiokande…
We test the hypothesis of non-radiative neutrinos decay using the latest IceCube data. Namely, we calculate the track-to-shower ratio expected in IceCube for the normal and inverted neutrino mass hierarchy taking into account the uncertainties in neutrino oscillation parameters. We show that the subset of data with energy above 60 TeV actually excludes the possibility of a neutrinos decay at the 1 sigma level of significance for both neutrino mass hierarchies.
We derive predictions for the Nadir angle (theta(n)) dependence of the ratio N(mu)/N(e) of the rates of the mu-like and e-like multi-GeV events measured in water-Cerenkov detectors in the case of 3-neutrino oscillations of the atmospheric nu(e) (antinu(e)) and nu(mu) (antinu(mu)), driven by one neutrino mass squared difference, |Delta m2(31)| ~ (2.5 - 3.0) x 10^(-3) eV^2 >> Delta m2(21). This ratio is particularly sensitive to the Earth matter effects in the atmospheric neutrino oscillations, and thus to the values of sin^2(theta(13)) and sin^2(theta(23)), theta(13) and theta(23) being the neu…
A new parameterisation of atmospheric muons deep underwater (or ice) is presented. It takes into account the simultaneous arrival of muons in bundle giving the multiplicity of the events and the muon energy spectrum as a function of their lateral distribution in a shower.
A variety of new physics models allows for neutrinos to up-scatter into heavier states. If the incident neutrino is energetic enough, the heavy neutrino may travel some distance before decaying. In this work, we consider the atmospheric neutrino flux as a source of such events. At IceCube, this would lead to a "double-bang" (DB) event topology, similar to what is predicted to occur for tau neutrinos at ultra-high energies. The DB event topology has an extremely low background rate from coincident atmospheric cascades, making this a distinctive signature of new physics. Our results indicate tha…
We discuss recent searches for new physics using high-energy atmospheric neutrino data from IceCube, namely sterile neutrinos with masses in the range $Δm^2 = 0.01$ eV$^2$ - 10 eV$^2$, and non-standard interactions (NSI) in the $ν_μ- ν_τ$ sector. We also present a brief review of the current status of NSI theory and phenomenology.
We calculate the atmospheric neutrino fluxes in the energy range $100$ GeV -- $10$ PeV with the use of several known hadronic models and a few parametrizations of the cosmic ray spectra which take into account the knee. The calculations are compared with the atmospheric neutrino measurements by Frejus, AMANDA, IceCube and ANTARES. An analytic description is presented for the conventional ($ν_μ+\barν_μ$) and ($ν_e+\barν_e$) energy spectra, averaged over zenith angles, which can be used to obtain test data of the neutrino event reconstruction in neutrino telescopes. The sum of the calculated atm…
It was suggested that a tension between the mass-squared differences obtained from the solar neutrino and KamLAND experiments can be solved by introducing the non-standard flavor-dependent interaction in neutrino propagation. In this paper we discuss the possibility to test such a hypothesis by atmospheric neutrino observations at the future Hyper-Kamiokande experiment. Assuming that the mass hierarchy is known, we find that the best-fit value from the solar neutrino and KamLAND data can be tested at more than 8 $σ$, while the one from the global analysis can be examined at 5.0 $σ$ (1.4 $σ$) f…
The sensitivity of a huge underground water/ice Cherenkov detector, such as PINGU in IceCube, to the neutrino mass hierarchy, the atmospheric mixing angle and its octant, is studied in detail. Based on the event rate decomposition in the propagation basis, we illustrate the smearing effects from the neutrino scattering, the visible energy and zenith angle reconstruction procedures, the energy and angular resolutions, and the muon mis-identification rate, as well as the impacts of systematic errors in the detector resolutions, the muon mis-identification rate, and the overall normalization. The…
We explore the physics potential of multi-megaton scale ice or water Cherenkov detectors with low ($\sim 1$ GeV) threshold. Using some proposed characteristics of the PINGU detector setup we compute the distributions of events versus neutrino energy $E_ν$ and zenith angle $θ_z$, and study their dependence on yet unknown neutrino parameters. The $(E_ν- θ_z)$ regions are identified where the distributions have the highest sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy, to the deviation of the 2-3 mixing from the maximal one and to the CP-phase. We evaluate significance of the measurements of the neu…
Although the framework for oscillations of the three neutrino flavors in the Standard Model has been convincingly established, indications persist that it may be incomplete. Challenges are coming from the LSND and MiniBooNe short-baseline experiments, from the neutrino sources used in the Gallex and Sage solar neutrino experiments and, more recently,from an a-posteriori analysis of reactor neutrino experiments. One way to accommodate the reported "anomalies", if real, is to introduce one or more sterile neutrinos in the mass range $δm^2 \sim 1 eV^2$. TeV atmospheric neutrinos propagating throu…
We show that study of the atmospheric neutrinos in the 10--100 GeV energy range by DeepCore sub-array of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory can substantially constrain the mixing of sterile neutrinos of mass $\sim 1$ eV with active neutrinos. In the scheme with one sterile neutrino we calculate $ν_μ-$ and $\barν_μ-$ oscillation probabilities as well as zenith angle distributions of $ν_μ^{CC}$ events in different energy intervals in DeepCore. The distributions depend on the mass hierarchy of active neutrinos. Therefore, in principle, the hierarchy can be identified, if $ν_s$ exists. After a few y…
We study the sensitivity of atmospheric neutrino experiments to the neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI) which is motivated by the tension between the two mass squared differences extracted from the KamLAND and solar neutrino experiments. In this study the sensitivity of the future Hyper-Kamiokande experiments for 4438 days to NSI is shown. Assuming that the mass hierarchy is known, we find that the best-fit value from the solar neutrino and KamLAND data can be tested at more than 8 $σ$, while the one from the global analysis can be examined at 5.0 $σ$ (1.4 $σ$) for the normal (inverted) m…
Among the information provided by high energy neutrinos, a promising possibility is to analyze the effects of a Violation of Equivalence Principle (VEP) on neutrino oscillations. We analyze the recently released IceCube data on atmospheric neutrino fluxes under the assumption of a VEP and obtain updated constraints on the parameter space with the benchmark choice that neutrinos with different masses couple with different strengths to the gravitational field. In this case we find that the VEP parameters times the local gravitational potential at Earth can be constrained at the level of $10^{-27…
I attempt to quantify how far from maximal one should expect the atmospheric mixing angle to be given a neutrino mass-matrix that leads, at zeroth order, to a nu_3 mass-eigenstate that is 0% nu_e, 50% nu_mu, and 50% nu_tau. This is done by assuming that the solar mass-squared difference is induced by an "anarchical" first order perturbation, an approach than can naturally lead to experimentally allowed values for all oscillation parameters. In particular, both |cos 2theta_atm| (the measure for the deviation of atmospheric mixing from maximal) and |U_e3| are of order sqrt(Delta m^2_sol/Delta m^…
