We evaluate the flux of tau neutrinos produced from the decay of pair produced taus from incident muons using a cascade equation analysis. To solve the cascade equations, our numerical result for the tau production $Z$ moment is given. Our results for the flux of tau neutrinos produced from incident muons are compared to the flux of tau neutrinos produced via oscillations and the direct prompt atmospheric tau neutrino flux. Results are given for both downward and upward going neutrinos fluxes and higher zenith angles are discussed. We conclude that the direct prompt atmospheric tau neutrino flux dominates these other atmospheric sources of tau neutrinos for neutrino energies larger than a few TeV for upward fluxes, and over a wider range of energy for downward fluxes.
The energy dependence of "secondary" neutrinos from the process nutau->tau->numubar->mubar for two input tau neutrino fluxes (F^0_nu ~ 1/E_nu and 1/E_nu^2), assumed to have been produced via neutrino oscillations from extragalactic sources, is evaluated to assess the impact of secondary neutrinos on the upward muon rates in a km^3 detector. We show that the secondard fluxes are considerably suppressed for the steeper flux, and even for fluxes ~ 1/E_nu, the secondary flux will be difficult to observe experimentally.
We present an evaluation of the atmospheric tau neutrino flux in the energy range between $10^2$ and $10^6$ GeV. The main source of tau neutrinos is from charmed particle production and decay. The $ν_τN\to τX$ event rate for a detector with a water equivalent volume of 1 km$^3$ is on the order of 60-100 events per year for $E_τ>100$ GeV, reducing to 18 events above 1 TeV. Event rates for atmospheric muon neutrino oscillations to tau neutrinos are also evaluated.
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 study the second and third generation masses in the context of the minimal renormalizable SO(10) theory. We show that if the see-saw takes the non-canonical (type II) form, large atmospheric neutrino mixing angle requires b-tau unification.
Extrapolating the tau and b masses in the MSSM tends to give for their ratio at the GUT scale a number around 1.2, for most viable values \tan β, rather than the minimal SU(5) prediction of 1. We suggest that this may be due to large off-diagonal elements in the charged lepton mass matrix M_L that can also explain the large atmospheric neutrino mixing angle. Several simple models with definite predictions for m_{tau}/m_b(M_{GUT}) are presented.
The convergence of the iterative solutions of the transport equations of cosmic muon and tau neutrinos propagating through Earth is studied and analyzed. For achieving a fast convergence of the iterative solutions of the coupled transport equations of nu_tau, nubar_tau and the associated tau^{\pm} fluxes, a new semi-analytic input algorithm is presented where the peculiar tau-decay contributions are implemented already in the initial zeroth order input. Furthermore, the common single transport equation for muon neutrinos is generalized by taking into account the contributions of secondary nu_m…
We discuss the problem of the small ratio of muon mass to tau mass in a class of seesaw models where maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing is enforced through a $μ$--$τ$ interchange symmetry. We introduce into those models an additional symmetry $T$ such that $m_μ= 0$ in the case of exact $T$ invariance. The symmetry $T$ may be softly broken in the Higgs potential, and one thus achieves $m_μ\ll m_τ$ in a technically natural way. We speculate on a wider applicability of this mechanism.
The presence of a tau component in the flux of atmospheric neutrinos inside the Earth, due to flavor oscillations, makes these neutrinos a valuable probe of interactions of the tau neutrino with matter. We study -- analytically and numerically -- the effects of nonstandard interactions in the nu_e-nu_tau sector on atmospheric neutrino oscillations, and calculate the bounds on the exotic couplings that follow from combining the atmospheric neutrino and K2K data. We find very good agreement between numerical results and analytical predictions derived from the underlying oscillation physics. Whil…
The recent data describing the evidence for neutrino oscillations by Super Kamiokande implies that two neutrinos are very strongly mixed. We ask the question: can approximate maximal neutrino mixing be natural in unified (GUT or string) models? We attempt to answer this question in as much generality as possible. Without specifying a particular model, we are able to show that a gauged family symmetry can naturally provide the required maximal mixing between mu and tau neutrinos. The second and third family neutrino mass eigenstates are almost degenerate with masses of order 0.2 eV.
The sensitivity of the atmospheric neutrino experiments to the non-standard flavor-dependent interaction in neutrino propagation is studied under the assumption that the only nonvanishing components of the non-standard matter effect are the electron and tau neutrino components $ε_{ee}$, $ε_{eτ}$, $ε_{ττ}$ and that the tau-tau component satisfies the constraint $ε_{ττ}=|ε_{eτ}|^2/(1+ε_{ee})$ which is suggested from the high energy behavior for atmospheric neutrino data.
In theories with three light neutrinos, a complete list of five zeroth-order textures for lepton mass matrices is found, which naturally yield: m_e = m_mu=0, m_tau \neq 0, Delta m^2_sun = 0, together with theta_{e tau} = 0, theta_{mu tau} approx 1. These textures provide suitable starting points for constructing theories which account for both atmospheric and solar neutrino fluxes. Using flavor symmetries, two schemes for such lepton masses are found, and example constructions exhibited.
Downward going atmospheric tau neutrino flux is estimated in the presence of three neutrino flavor oscillations for 1 GeV < E < 10^3 GeV. The relative differences between the three and purely two neutrino flavor oscillations are elaborated. As an implication, the downward going atmospheric tau neutrino flux is compared with the galactic plane tau neutrino flux that is also estimated in the presence of three neutrino flavor oscillations. It is pointed out that the galactic plane tau neutrino flux dominates over the downward going atmospheric tau neutrino flux until E \sim 10 GeV.
An ultra-large Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber-based neutrino detector will have the uncommon ability to detect atmospheric tau neutrino events. This paper discusses the most promising modes for identifying charged current tau neutrino interactions, and shows that, with simple kinematic cuts, ~30 tau neutrinos can be isolated in a 100 kt*yr exposure, with greater than 4 sigma significance. This sample is sufficient to perform flux-averaged total cross-section and cross-section shape parameterization measurements -- the first steps toward using tau neutrinos to search for physics beyond th…
We discuss precision measurements of the leading atmospheric parameters at a standard neutrino factory with a detector that is sensitive to muons alone. The oscillation of the muon- and electron neutrinos in the neutrino factory beam to tau neutrinos adds to the muon events sample (both right sign and wrong sign) via leptonic decays of the taus produced through charge-current interactions in the detector. In particular, we study how this affects a precision measurement of the atmospheric mixing parameters and the deviation of nu_mu <--> nu_tau mixing from maximality. In spite of the enhancemen…
Neutrinos with energy greater than GeV are copiously produced in the p(A,p) interactions occurring in the earth atmosphere and in our galactic plane. A comparison of the tau and mu neutrino flux in the presence of neutrino oscillations from these two astrophysical sites is presented. It is pointed out that the galactic plane tau neutrino flux dominates over the downward going atmospheric tau neutrino flux at much lower energy value than that for the dominance of the mu neutrino flux from these two sites. Future prospects for possible observations of galactic tau neutrino flux are also briefly …
We compare the tau neutrino flux arising from the galaxy and the earth atmosphere for $10^{3} \leq E/{GeV} \leq 10^{11}$. The intrinsic and oscillated tau neutrino fluxes from both sources are considered. We find that, for $E\geq 10^3$ GeV, the oscillated $ν_τ$ flux along the galactic plane dominates over the maximal intrinsic atmospheric $ν_τ$ flux, i.e., the flux along the horizontal direction. We also briefly comment on the prospects for observing these high-energy tau neutrinos.
The current case for atmospheric $ν_μ$ oscillations into active or sterile neutrinos is reviewed. It is argued that neither the study of neutral current events at Super-Kamiokande, nor the information obtained from future long baseline experiments might be sufficient to unambigously decide between these two scenarios. However, a combination of these results with the results from future short or intermediate baseline $τ$ appearance experiments would clearly resolve most of the remaining ambiguities. This conclusion does not strongly depend on whether the results from LSND will be confirmed or n…
Considering four-neutrino schemes of type 3+1, we identify four small regions of the neutrino mixing parameter space compatible with all data. Assuming a small mixing between the sterile neutrino and the isolated mass eigenstate we show that large nu_mu->nu_tau and nu_e->nu_tau transitions are predicted in short-baseline experiments and could be observed in the near future in dedicated experiments. We discuss also implications for solar, atmospheric and long-baseline neutrino experiments and we present a formalism that allows to describe in 3+1 schemes atmospheric neutrino oscillations, long-b…
We present a semi-analytic calculation on the atmospheric tau neutrino flux in the GeV to TeV energy range. The atmospheric $ν_τ$ flux is calculated for the entire zenith angle range. This flux is contributed by the oscillations of muon neutrinos coming from the two-body $π, K$ decays and the three-body $μ^{\pm}$ decays, and the intrinsic tau neutrino flux surviving the oscillations. The uncertainties in our calculations are discussed in detail. The implications of our result are also discussed.
The largest tau neutrino dataset to date is IceCube's atmospheric tau neutrino appearance dataset containing $>1,000$ tau neutrino and antineutrino events as determined by a fit to a standard three-flavor oscillation framework. On an event-by-event basis, however, it is impossible to know that any given event is a tau neutrino as they are identical to either an electron neutrino charged-current event or a neutral-current interaction of any active flavor. Nonetheless, we conclusively show that, using only the cascade sample even without knowledge of the oscillation parameters and without assumi…
Solutions to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly which smoothly interpolate between nu_mu -> nu_tau and nu_mu -> nu_s oscillations are studied. It is shown that, although the Super-Kamiokande data disfavor the pure nu_mu -> nu_s channel, one cannot exclude sizable amplitude for the nu_mu -> nu_s channel in addition to nu_mu -> nu_tau oscillations.
We present the first detailed simulation study of tau neutrino-induced charged current (CC) events from atmospheric neutrino interactions in the Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the proposed India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) laboratory. Since the intrinsic atmospheric neutrino flux at few to 10s of GeV energy comprises only electron and muon neutrinos (and anti-neutrinos) with negligible tau neutrino component, any signature of atmospheric tau neutrinos is a signal for neutrino oscillations. We study the tau leptons produced through these CC interactions via their hadronic decay. These…
The PMNS neutrino mixing matrix is given, in general, by the product of two unitary matrices associated with the diagonalization of the charged lepton and neutrino mass matrices, respectively. Assuming that the active flavor neutrinos possess a Majorana mass matrix which is diagonalized by a bimaximal mixing matrix, we give the allowed forms of the charged lepton mixing matrix and the corresponding implied forms of the charged lepton mass matrix. We further assume that the origin of bimaximal mixing is a weakly broken flavor symmetry of the neutrino Majorana mass matrix, corresponding to the c…
The sensitivity of the atmospheric neutrino experiments to the non-standard flavor-dependent interaction in neutrino propagation is studied under the assumption that the only nonvanishing components of the non-standard matter effect are the electron and tau neutrino components $ε_{ee}$, $ε_{eτ}$, $ε_{ττ}$ and that the tau-tau component satisfies the constraint $ε_{ττ}=|ε_{eτ}|^2/(1+ε_{ee})$ which is suggested from the high energy behavior for atmospheric neutrino data. It is shown that the Superkamiokande (SK) data for 4438 days constrains $|\tanβ|\equiv|ε_{eτ}/(1+ε_{ee})|\lesssim 0.8$ at 2.5$…
We discuss precision measurements of the leading atmospheric parameters at a standard neutrino factory. The oscillation of the muon and electron neutrinos (anti-neutrinos) to tau neutrinos (anti-neutrinos) adds to the muon events sample (both right sign and wrong sign) via leptonic decays of the taus produced through charge-current interactions in the detector. We focus on how this contribution affects a precision measurement of the atmospheric mixing parameters and the deviation of muon neutrino -- tau neutrino mixing from maximality.
If the correct interpretation of the Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino data is ν_μ-> ν_τoscillation, the contained data sample should already have more than 10 tau appearance events. We study the challenging task of detecting the tau, focussing on the decay chain τ^\pm -> ρ^\pm -> π^\pm π^0 in events with quasi-elastic tau production. The background level, which is currently quite uncertain because of a lack of relevant neutral current data, can be measured by the near detector in the K2K experiment. Our estimates of the background suggest that it may be possible to detect tau appearance i…
Assuming atmospheric neutrino oscillations with dominant nu_mu<--->nu_tau transitions, we discuss how subdominant nu_e mixing (within the Chooz reactor bounds) can alter the zenith distributions of neutrino-induced electrons and muons. We isolate two peculiar distortion effects, one mainly related to nu_e mixing in vacuum and the other to matter oscillations, that may be sufficiently large to be detected by the SuperKamiokande atmospheric nu experiment. These effects (absent for pure two-flavor nu_mu<--->nu_tau transitions) do not vanish in the limit of energy-averaged oscillations.
We review the status of nu_mu-->nu_tau flavor transitions of atmospheric neutrinos in the 92 kton-year data sample collected in the first phase of the Super-Kamiokande (SK) experiment, in combination with the recent spectral data from the KEK-to-Kamioka (K2K) accelerator experiment (including 29 single-ring muon events). We consider a theoretical framework which embeds flavor oscillations plus hypothetical decoherence effects, and where both standard oscillations and pure decoherence represent limiting cases. It is found that standard oscillations provide the best description of the SK+K2K dat…
The neutral current effects of the future high statistics atmospheric neutrino data can be used to distinguish the mechanisms between a $ν_μ$ oscillation to a tau neutrino or to a sterile neutrino. However, if neutrinos possess large diagonal and/or transition magnetic moments, the neutrino magnetic moments can contribute to the neutral current effects which can be studied by the single $π^0$ production events in the Super-K data. This effect should be included in the future analyses of atmospheric data in the determination of $ν_μ$ to tau or sterile neutrino oscillation.
A detailed investigation of hybrid inflation and the subsequent reheating process is performed within a mu problem solving supersymmetric model based on a left-right symmetric gauge group. The process of baryogenesis via leptogenesis is especially studied. For mu and tau neutrino masses consistent with the small angle MSW resolution of the solar neutrino problem and the recent results of the SuperKamiokande experiment, we show that maximal mu-tau neutrino mixing can be achieved. The required value of the relevant coupling constant is, however, quite small (of the order 10^{-6}).
We study the robustness of the determination of the neutrino masses and mixing from the analysis of atmospheric and K2K data under the presence of different forms of phenomenologically allowed new physics in the nu_mu--nu_tau sector. We focus on vector and tensor-like new physics interactions which allow us to treat, in a model independent way, effects due to the violation of the equivalence principle, violations of the Lorentz invariance both CPT conserving and CPT violating, non-universal couplings to a torsion field and non-standard neutrino interactions with matter. We perform a global ana…
Motivated by the latest neutrino oscillation data which is consistent with maximal atmospheric mixing and maximal leptonic CP violation, we review various results in $μτ$ symmetry, then include several new observations and clarifications, including identifying a new general form of neutrino mass matrix with $μτ$ symmetry. We then apply the new results to the neutrino mass matrix associated with the Littlest Seesaw model, and show that it approximately satisfies the new general form with $μτ$ symmetry, and that this is responsible for its approximate predictions of maximal atmospheric mixing an…
The atmospheric neutrino anomaly reported by the super-Kamiokande collaboration suggests existence of a large flavour violating Yukawa coupling in the lepton sector. We discuss lepton-flavour violation at low energies in the framework of the supersymmetric SU(5)_{GUT} model with right-handed neutrinos. We find that for a wide range of parameter space suggested from the atmospheric neutrino anomaly, if the tau-neutrino Yukawa coupling is as large as that of top quark, lower bounds of the branching ratios of mu -> e gamma, tau -> mu gamma, and the mu-e conversion rate on $^{48}_{22}Ti$ become ar…
We compare the tau neutrino flux arising from the galaxy and the earth atmosphere for 10^3 < E/GeV < 10^11. The intrinsic and oscillated tau neutrino fluxes from both sources are calculated. The intrinsic galactic ν_τ flux (E > 10^3 GeV) is calculated by considering the interactions of high-energy cosmic-rays with the matter present in our galaxy, whereas the oscillated galactic ν_τ flux is coming from the oscillation of the galactic ν_μ flux. For the intrinsic atmospheric ν_τ flux, we extend the validity of a previous calculation from E < 10^6 GeV up to E < 10^11 GeV. The oscillated atmospher…
We investigate whether flavor changing neutrino interactions (FCNIs) can be sufficiently large to provide a viable solution to the atmospheric neutrino problem. Effective operators induced by heavy boson exchange that allow for flavor changing neutrino scattering off quarks or electrons are related by an $SU(2)_L$ rotation to operators that induce anomalous tau decays. Since $SU(2)_L$ violation is small for New Physics at or above the weak scale, one can use the upper bounds on lepton flavor violating tau decays or on lepton universality violation to put severe, model-independent bounds on the…
Dark matter trapped in the Sun produces a flux of all flavors of neutrinos, which then reach the Earth after propagating out of the Sun and oscillating from the production point to the detector. The typical signal which is looked at refers to the muon neutrino component and consists of a flux of up-going muons in a neutrino detector. We propose instead a novel signature: the possibility of looking at the tau neutrino component of the dark matter signal, which is almost background-free in the downward-going direction, since the tau neutrino amount in atmospheric neutrinos is negligible and in t…
Neutrinos with energy greater than GeV are copiously produced in the p(A,p) interactions occurring in several astrophysical sites such as (i) the earth atmosphere, (ii) our galactic plane as well as in (iii) the galaxy clusters. A comparison of the tau and mu neutrino flux in the presence of neutrino oscillations from these three representative astrophysical sites is presented. It is pointed out that the non-atmospheric tau neutrino flux starts dominating over the downward going atmospheric tau neutrino flux for neutrino energy E as low as 10 GeV. This energy value is much lower than the energ…
We point out the opportunity of tau neutrino astronomy for neutrino energies of the order of 10 GeV to 10$^{3}$ GeV. In this energy range, it is demonstrated that the flavor dependence in the background atmospheric neutrino flux leads to drastically different prospects between the observation of astrophysical muon neutrinos and that of astrophysical tau neutrinos. Taking the galactic-plane neutrino flux as a targeted astrophysical source, we found that the galactic-plane tau neutrino flux dominates over the atmospheric tau neutrino flux for neutrino energies beyond 10 GeV. Hence the galactic-p…
A general approach to understanding the large mixing seen in atmospheric neutrinos is explained, as well as a highly predictive SO(10) model which implements this approach. It is also seen how bimaximal mixing naturally arises in this scheme. (Talk presented at NNN99, SUNY Stony Brook, Sept. 22-26, 1999)
We investigate the possibility of detecting ultra-high energy cosmic tau-neutrinos by means of a process involving a double extensive air shower, the so-called Double-Bang Phenomenon. In this process a primary tau-neutrino interacts with an atmospheric quark creating a hadronic extensive air shower that contains a tau which subsequently decays creating a second extensive air shower. The number of these events strongly depends on the cross section and on the flux of ultra-high energy tau-neutrinos arriving at the Earth's atmosphere. We estimate the potential of optical detectors to observe Doub…
We propose that leptonic CP violation arises from a breaking of the mu-tau exchange symmetry in the neutrino mass matrix which in turn is indicated by the near maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing and the near zero θ_{13}. We find that for the case of a normal hierarchy, present data already restricts the way CP violation may appear in the neutrino mass matrix and there is an interesting correlation between the mixing angle θ_{13}, the solar mixing angle θ_{12} and the Dirac CP phase. In the inverted hierarchy only θ_{13} and the Dirac phase are linked. We also discuss the impact of this kind o…
Dark matter particles can be gravitationally trapped by celestial bodies, motivating searches for localized annihilation or decay. If neutrinos are among the decay products, then IceCube and other neutrino observatories could detect them. We investigate this scenario for dark matter particles above $m_χ \gtrsim$ PeV producing tau neutrino signals, using updated modeling of dark matter capture and thermalization. At these energies, tau neutrino regeneration is an important effect during propagation through Earth, allowing detection at distances far longer than one interaction length. We show ho…
Neutrino oscillation experiments provide a unique tool for probing neutrino-matter interactions, especially those involving the tau neutrino. We describe the sensitivity of the present atmospheric neutrino data to these interactions in the framework of a three-flavor analysis. Compared to the two-flavor nu_mu-nu_tau analyses, we find qualitatively new features, in particular, that large non-standard interactions, comparable in strength to those in the Standard Model, can be consistent with the data. The existence of such interactions could imply a smaller value of the neutrino mixing angle and…
It is shown that recent results from the Super-Kamiokande detector constrain the tau neutrino diagonal magnetic moment to $μ_{ν_τ} < 1.3\times 10^{-7} μ_{B}$ for the case of $ν_μ\to ν_τ$ interpretation of the atmospheric neutrino anomaly. It is pointed out that the large magnetic moment of the tau neutrino could affect further understanding of the origin of the anomaly.
We present a calculation of the fluxes of muons and muon neutrinos from the decays of pions and kaons that are themselves the decay products of charmed particles produced in the atmosphere by cosmic ray-air collisions. Using the perturbative cross section for charm production, these lepton fluxes are two to three orders of magnitude smaller than the fluxes from the decays of pions and kaons directly produced in cosmic ray-air collisions. Intrinsic charm models do not significantly alter our conclusions, nor do models with a charm cross section enhanced in the region above an incident cosmic ra…
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…
The Sun albedo of cosmic rays at GeVs energy has been discovered recently by FERMI satellite. They are traces of atmospheric CR hitting solar atmosphere and reflecting skimming gamma photons. Even if relevant for astrophysics, as being trace of atmospheric solar Cosmic Ray noises they cannot offer any signal of neutrino astronomy. On the contrary the Moon, with no atmosphere, may become soon a novel filtering calorimeter and an amplifier of energetic muon astronomical neutrinos (at TeV up to hundred TeV energy); these lepton tracks leave an imprint in their beta decay while in flight to Earth.…
We provide a framework for quasi-degenerate neutrinos consistent with a successful leptogenesis, based on the L_mu-L_tau flavor symmetry and its breaking pattern. In this scheme, a fine-tuning is needed to arrange the small solar neutrino mass splitting. Once it is ensured, the atmospheric neutrino mass splitting and the deviation from the maximal atmospheric mixing angle are driven by the same symmetry breaking parameter lambda~0.1, and the reactor angle is predicted to be slightly smaller than lambda, while the Dirac CP phase is generically of order one. Given that the pseudo-Dirac nature of…
We point out the opportunity of the tau neutrino astronomy for the neutrino energy E ranging between 10 GeV and 10^3 GeV. In this energy range, the intrinsic tau neutrino production is suppressed relative to the intrinsic muon neutrino production. Any sizable tau neutrino flux may thus arise because of the ν_μ\to ν_τ neutrino oscillations only. It is demonstrated that, in the presence of the neutrino oscillations, consideration of the neutrino flavor dependence in the background atmospheric neutrino flux leads to the drastically different prospects between the observation of the astrophysical …
We propose an experiment to test the hypothesis that the reported anomaly on atmospheric neutrino fluxes is due to nu_mu <-> nu_x oscillations. It will rely both on a disappearance technique, exploiting the method of the dependence of the event rate on L/E, which was recently shown to be effective for detection of neutrino oscillation and measurement of the oscillation parameters, and on an appearance technique, looking for an excess of muon-less events at high energy produced by upward-going tau neutrinos. The detector will consist of iron planes interleaved by limited streamer tubes. The tot…
The effect of matter enhanced neutrino oscillations on atmosheric neutrinos is investigated systematically in the framework of one mass dominant model of three neutrinos. The resonance conditions of neutrino crossing the earth are determined by the three parameters, namely, the zenith angle, ${Δm^2/E}$, and the mixing angle ${θ_3}$ of the electron neutrinos with tau neutrinos. The values of the triplet under the resonance is found numerically.
We present models that can reconcile the solar and atmospheric neutrino data with the existence of a hot dark matter component in the universe. This dark matter is a quasi-Dirac neutrino whose mass $m_{DM}$ arises at the one-loop level. The solar neutrino deficit is explained via nonadiabatic conversions of electron neutrino to a sterile neutrino and the atmospheric neutrino data via maximal muon neutrino to tau neutrino oscillations generated by higher order loop diagrams. For $m_{DM} \sim 30$ eV the radiative neutrino decay can lead to photons that can ionize interstellar hydrogen. In one of…
In the context of the recent (79.5 kTy) Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino data, we concisely review the status of muonic-tauonic flavor oscillations and of the subdominant electron or sterile neutrino mixing, in schemes with three or four families and one dominant mass scale. In the three-family case, where we include the full CHOOZ spectral data, we also show, through a specific example, that ``maximal'' violations of the one-dominant mass scale approximation are not ruled out yet.
We consider flavor changing effective neutrino interactions in the context of massive neutrinos in the issue of atmospheric neutrinos. Assuming as usual that this is an indication of the oscillation of muon neutrinos into tau neutrinos we show that there is a set of parameters which is consistent with the MSW resonance condition for the typical Earth density and atmospheric neutrino energies. In particular we show that even if the vacuum mixing angle vanishes it is still possible to have a resonance which is compatible with the atmospheric neutrino data. We also briefly consider the case of th…
We discuss the effects of non-standard neutrino interactions on muon rates in high statistics atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments like IceCube DeepCore. We concentrate on the mu-tau sector, which is presently the least constrained. It is shown that the magnitude of the effects depends strongly on the sign of the Epsilon_MuTau parameter describing this non-standard interactions. A simple analytic model is used to understand the parameter space where differences between the two signs are maximized. We discuss how this effect is partially degenerate with changing the neutrino mass hierar…
The simplest explanation for the observed deficit of atmospheric muon neutrinos is that they have oscillated into tau or sterile neutrinos with an oscillation length of the order of the Earth diameter. In order to confirm this hypothesis, all other possible explanations should be ruled out. We propose that a viable alternative hypothesis is that the muon neutrino deficit is caused by flavor sampling events that result in a loss of coherence. The coherence length of the muon neutrinos is expected to be approximately one Earth diameter. We give predictions and experimental tests of this scenario…
Tau neutrino and antineutrino interactions with nucleons in large underground or under ice detectors will be important signals of astrophysical and atmospheric sources of neutrinos. We present here a theoretical update of the deep inelastic scattering contribution to the tau neutrino and antineutrino charged current cross sections with isoscalar nucleon targets and proton targets for incident neutrinos and antineutrinos in the energy range from 10 GeV to 10 TeV. Next-to-leading order quantum chromodynamic corrections, target mass corrections and heavy quark effects are included. Uncertainties …
The atmospheric neutrino data collected by the Super-Kamiokande experiment span about four decades in neutrino energy E, and are thus appropriate to probe the energy dependence of the oscillation wavelength λassociated to nu_mu<--->nu_tau flavor transitions, when these are assumed to explain the data. Such dependence takes the form λ^{-1}\propto E^n in a wide class of theoretical models, including ``standard'' oscillations due to neutrino mass and mixing (n=-1), energy-independent oscillations (n=0), and violations of the equivalence principle or of Lorentz invariance (n=1). We study first how…
