Neutrino Interaction Physics in Neutrino Telescopes
Teppei Katori, Juan Pablo Yanez, Tianlu Yuan
备注：
22 pages, 11 figures, accepted version for the European Physical Journal Special Topics, "Neutrino Interactions in the Intermediate and High Energy Region", ISSN: 1951-6355 (Print) 1951-6401 (Online)
Neutrino telescopes can observe neutrino interactions starting at GeV energies by sampling a small fraction of the Cherenkov radiation produced by charged secondary particles. These experiments instrument volumes massive enough to collect substantial samples of neutrinos up to the TeV scale as well as small samples at the PeV scale. This unique ability of neutrino telescopes has been exploited to study the properties of neutrino interactions across energies that cannot be accessed with man-made beams. Here we present the methods and results obtained by IceCube, the most mature neutrino telescope in operation, and offer a glimpse of what the future holds in this field.
We report on the results of a Monte Carlo simulation study of a km^3 scale deep underwater Cherenkov detector aimed at detecting neutrinos of astrophysical origin. This analysis has been undertaken as part of the NEMO R&D project to develop such an experiment close to the Southern Italian coasts. We have studied the reconstruction capabilities of various arrays of phototubes in order to determine the detector geometries which optimize performance and cost. We have also investigated the possibility of designing a detector with characteristics suited to an experiment on atmospheric neutrino osci…
We use a sample of 990 upward-going muons, induced primarily by atmospheric neutrinos, to search for neutrinos of astrophysical origin. No evidence has been found using the event direction information. Flux limits of the order of 10^-15 cm^-2 s^-1 are imposed on current models for candidate point-sources. A space-time correlation search has been undertaken between 2328 BATSE gamma ray bursts (GRBs) and MACRO upward-going muons.
The ANTARES experiment is currently the largest underwater neutrino telescope. It is taking high quality data since 2007 and aims to detect high energy neutrinos that are expected from the acceleration of cosmic rays from astrophysical sources. We will review the status of the detector and present several analyses carried out on atmospheric muons and neutrinos. For example we will show the latest results from searches for neutrinos from steady cosmic point-like sources, for neutrinos from Fermi Bubbles, for neutrinos from Dark Matter in the Sun and the measurement of atmospheric neutrino oscil…
It is shown how deviations of neutrino flavor mix from the canonical 1 : 1 : 1 in high energy astrophysical neutrinos can provide evidence for neutrino decays with lifetimes as long as $10^4 s/eV$.
We study the DM-neutrino interaction in the framework of simplified model. The phenomenology of such an interaction are derived. We also investigate the bound on DM-neutrino interaction from the LHC and neutrino telescopes. We find that for the case of a scalar dark matter, the LHC gives a stronger bound on dark matter annihilation cross-section than the neutrino telescopes. However, for the fermionic dark matter case the neutrino telescopes bounds are more stringent for dark matter mass, $\gtrsim 200$ MeV. In the case of lower DM mass, the neutrino telescopes provide better bounds for a light…
We expound the impact of extra sterile species on the ultra high energy neutrino fluxes in neutrino telescopes. We use three types of well-known flux ratios and compare the values of these flux ratios in presence of sterile neutrinos, with those predicted by deviation from the tribimaximal mixing scheme. We show that in the upcoming neutrino telescopes, its easy to confuse between the signature of sterile neutrinos with that of the deviation from tribimaximal mixing. We also show that if the measured flux ratios acquire a value well outside the range predicted by the standard scenario with thr…
Neutrino telescopes with large detection volumes can demonstrate that the current indications of neutrino oscillation are correct or if a better description can be achieved with non-standard alternatives. Observations of contained muons produced by atmospheric neutrinos can better constrain the allowed region for oscillations or determine the relevant parameters of non-standard models. We analyze the possibility of neutrino telescopes measuring atmospheric neutrino oscillations. We suggest adjustments to improve this potential. An addition of four densely-instrumented strings to the AMANDA II …
We investigate features of the sterile neutrinos in the presence of a light gauge boson $X^μ$ that couples to the neutrino sector. The novel bounds on the active-sterile neutrino mixings $| U_{\ell 4} |^2$, especially for tau flavor ($l = τ$), from various collider and fixed target experiments are explored. Also, taking into account the additional decay channel of the sterile neutrino into a light gauge boson ($ν_4 \to ν_\ell e^+ e^-$), we explore and constrain a parameter space for low energy excess in neutrino oscillation experiments.
We imagine that large neutrino telescopes will be built and that distant neutrino sources of high energies and fluxes exist. Some possible, if difficult, uses to which they might be put are described; including (i) detecting neutrino mass-mixing possibly upto delta m^2 of 10^{-16}eV^2; (ii) measuring neutrino cross-sections at PeV energies; (iii) detecting relic neutrinos; (iv) doing cosmology with neutrinos and (v) SETI with neutrinos.
In this paper, we propose a hexagonal description for the flavor composition of ultrahigh-energy (UHE) neutrinos and antineutrinos, which will hopefully be determined at the future large neutrino telescopes. With such a geometrical description, we are able to clearly separate the individual flavor composition of neutrinos from that of antineutrinos in one single regular hexagon, which can be regarded as a natural generalization of the widely-used ternary plot. For illustration, we consider the $pp$ or $pγ$ collisions as the dominant production mechanism for UHE neutrinos and antineutrinos in t…
The observation of high-energy extraterrestrial neutrinos at IceCube represents the beginning of the era of neutrino astronomy. In this paper, we study the cosmic neutrino flavor ratios against the Dirac CP-violating phase at neutrino telescopes, taking into account the charged-current and neutral-current interactions at the detectors. We then demonstrate how to probe mass hierarchy at future neutrino telescopes by the precise measurements of the cosmic neutrino flavor ratios. We show that the sensitivity of our scheme is independent of the undetermined values of the Dirac CP-violating phase. …
In light of the exciting campaign of cosmogenic neutrino detection, we investigate the double and multiple tau bangs detectable at future tau neutrino telescopes. Such events are expected from the Standard Model (SM) higher-order processes, which can be easily identified with broad techniques anticipated at future tau neutrino telescopes. We find that SM perturbative processes can already contribute observable double-bang events to telescopes with a sensitivity of collecting $\mathcal{O}(100)$ cosmogenic neutrino events. The detectable but suppressed rate in fact makes the double and multiple …
Neutrino telescopes have a wide scientic scope. One of their main goals is the detection of dark matter, for which they have specic advantages. Neutrino telescopes offer the possibility of looking at several kinds of sources, not all of them available to other indirect searches. In this work we provide an overview of the results obtained by the ANTARES neutrino telescope, which has been taking data for almost ten years. One of the most interesting ones is the Sun, since a detection of high energy neutrinos from it would be a very clean indication of dark matter, given that no signicant astroph…
It is shown how high energy neutrino beams from very distant sources can be utilised to learn about many neutrino properties such as lifetimes, mass hierarchy, mixing, minuscule pseudo-Dirac mass splittings and other exotic properties. In addition, the production mechanism of neutrinos in the astrophysical sources can also be elucidated.
We parameterize the initial flux composition of high energy astrophysical neutrinos as (Phi_e^0 : Phi_mu^0 : Phi_tau^0) = (1 : n : 0), where n characterizes the source. All usually assumed neutrino sources appear as limits of this simple parametrization. We investigate how precise neutrino telescopes can pin down the value of n. We furthermore show that there is a neutrino mixing scenario in which the ratio of muon neutrinos to the other neutrinos takes a constant value regardless of the initial flux composition. This occurs when the muon neutrino survival probability takes its minimal allowed…
Neutrino oscillations have been probed during the last few decades using multiple neutrino sources and experimental set-ups. In the recent years, very large volume neutrino telescopes have started contributing to the field. First ANTARES and then IceCube have relied on large and sparsely instrumented volumes to observe atmospheric neutrinos for combinations of baselines and energies inaccessible to other experiments. Using this advantage, the latest result from IceCube starts approaching the precision of other established technologies, and is paving the way for future detectors, such as ORCA a…
A measurement of the ultrahigh-energy (UHE) cosmic neutrinos at a km^3-size neutrino telescope will open a new window to constrain the 3 x 3 neutrino mixing matrix V and probe possible new physics. We point out that it is in principle possible to examine the non-unitarity of V, which is naturally expected in a class of seesaw models with one or more TeV-scale Majorana neutrinos, by using neutrino telescopes. Considering the UHE neutrinos produced from the decays of charged pions arising from proton-proton and (or) proton-gamma collisions at a distant astrophysical source, we show that their fl…
With an effective telescope area of order $10^4$ m$^2$ for TeV neutrinos, a threshold near $\sim$50 GeV and a pointing accuracy of 2.5 degrees per muon track, the AMANDA detector represents the first of a new generation of high energy neutrino telescopes, reaching a scale envisaged over 25 years ago. We describe early results on the calibration of natural deep ice as a particle detector as well as on AMANDA's performance as a neutrino telescope.
We use likelihood approach for search for local astrophysical neutrino sources in unbinned versus binned methods with Baikal deep underwater telescopes. We analyze neutrino data sample selected with NT200 telescope for 1038 live days by scanning a celestial map with different nets and for listed gamma ray sources. Significance of most probable location of enhance in measured number of events is found to be less than one sigma. We obtain the upper limits and a sensitivity at 90\% C.L. on neutrino fluxes from listed sources for NT200 and NT1000 correspondingly.
The ANTARES underwater neutrino telescope is located in the Mediterranean Sea about 40 km from Toulon at a depth of 2475 m. In its 12 line configuration it has almost 900 photomultipliers in 295 floors. The performance of the detector is discussed and several results are presented, including the measurements of downgoing muons, atmospheric neutrinos, search for a diffuse flux of high energy muon neutrinos, search for cosmic point sources of neutrinos, multi messenger astronomy, searches for fast magnetic monopoles and slow nuclearites. A short discussion is also made on Earth and Sea Science s…
The progress in the construction and operation of the Baikal Gigaton Volume Detector in Lake Baikal is reported. The detector is designed for search for high energy neutrinos whose sources are not yet reliably identified. It currently includes 2304 optical modules arranged on 64 strings, providing an effective volume of 0.4 km3 for cascades with energy above 100 TeV. We review the scientific case for Baikal-GVD, the construction plan, and first results from the partially built experiment, which is currently the largest neutrino telescope in the Northern Hemisphere and still growing up.
We study the detection prospects of relatively light charged scalars in radiative Majorana neutrino mass models, such as the Zee model and its variants using scalar leptoquarks, at current and future neutrino telescopes. In particular, we show that these scalar mediators can give rise to Glashow-like resonance features in the ultra-high energy neutrino (UHE) event spectrum at the IceCube neutrino observatory and its high-energy upgrade IceCube-Gen2. The same scalars can also give rise to observable non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI), and we show that the UHE neutrinos provide a complemen…
The MiniBooNE results have still not been able to comprehensively rule out the oscillation interpretation of the LSND experiment. So far the so-called short baseline experiments with energy in the MeV range and baseline of few meters have been probing the existence of sterile neutrinos. We show how signatures of these extra sterile states could be obtained in TeV energy range atmospheric neutrinos travelling distances of thousands of kilometers. Atmospheric neutrinos in the TeV range would be detected by the upcoming neutrino telescopes. Of course vacuum oscillations of these neutrinos would b…
We update the science prospects for the recently completed AMANDA South Pole neutrino detector. With an effective telescope area of order 10^4 m^2 and a threshold of ~50 GeV, it represents the first instrument of a new generation of high energy neutrino detectors, envisaged over 25 years ago. We describe the instrument and its performance, and map its expansion to a detector of kilometer dimension.
We show in this paper that the observation of the angular distribution of upward-going muons and cascade events induced by atmospheric neutrinos at the TeV energy scale, which can be performed by a kilometer-scale neutrino telescope, such as the IceCube detector, can be used to probe a large neutrino mass splitting, $| Δm^2 | \sim (0.5-2.0)$ eV$^2$, implied by the LSND experiment and discriminate among four neutrino mass schemes. This is due to the fact that such a large mass scale can promote non negligible muon neutrino to electron/tau neutrino (and/or anti-muon neutrino to anti-electron/ant…
We discuss the interplay of neutrino oscillation and decay properties at neutrino telescopes. Motivated by recent unparticle scenarios, which open the possibility of new neutrino decay modes over astrophysical distances, we perform a complete classification of possible decay schemes, and we illustrate how different scenarios can be identified. Moreover, we show that the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes to standard neutrino properties, such as the mass hierarchy or delta_CP, is greatly enhanced in specific decay scenarios. In particular we discuss the impact of an astrophysical neutrino detec…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has revealed the existence of sources of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. However, identification of the sources is challenging because astrophysical neutrinos are difficult to separate from the background of atmospheric neutrinos produced in cosmic-ray-induced particle cascades in the atmosphere. The efficient detection of air showers in coincidence with detected neutrinos can greatly reduce those backgrounds and increase the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes. Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) are sensitive to gamma-ray-induced (and cosmic-ray-indu…
Neutrino telescopes offer an alternative way to explore the Universe. Several projects are in operation or under construction. A detector under the ocean is very promising because of the very accurate angular resolution that it provides. The ANTARES project is intended to demonstrate the feasibilty of such a detector.
There should be not doubt by now that neutrino telescopes are competitive instruments when it comes to searches for dark matter. Their large detector volumes collect hundreds of neutrinos per day. They scrutinize the whole sky continuously, being sensitive to neutrino signals of all flavours from dark matter annihilations in nearby objects (Sun, Earth, Milky Way Center and Halo) as well as from far away galaxies or galaxy clusters, and over a wide energy range. In this review we summarize the analysis techniques and recent results on dark matter searches from the neutrino telescopes currently …
We propose a simple but useful parametrization of the flavor composition of ultrahigh-energy neutrino fluxes produced from distant astrophysical sources: $ϕ^{}_e : ϕ^{}_μ: ϕ^{}_τ= \sin^2 ξ\cos^2 ζ: \cos^2 ξ\cos^2 ζ: \sin^2 ζ$. We show that it is possible to determine or constrain $ξ$ and $ζ$ by observing two independent neutrino flux ratios at the second-generation neutrino telescopes, provided three neutrino mixing angles and the Dirac CP-violating phase have been well measured in neutrino oscillations. Any deviation of $ζ$ from zero will signify the existence of cosmic $ν^{}_τ$ and $\barν^{}…
We examine the dependence of event rates at neutrino telescopes on the neutrino-nucleon cross section for neutrinos with energy above 1 PeV, and contrast the results with those for cosmic ray experiments. Simple scaling of the Standard Model cross sections leaves the rates of upward events essentially unchanged. Details, such as detector depth and cross section inelasticity, can influence rates. Numerical estimates of upward shower, muon and tau event rates in the IceCube detector confirm these results.
Spectacular processes in astrophysical sites produce high-energy cosmic rays which are further accelerated by Fermi-shocks into a power-law spectrum. These, in passing through radiation fields and matter, produce neutrinos. Neutrino telescopes are designed with large detection volumes to observe such astrophysical sources. A large volume is necessary because the fluxes and cross-sections are small. We estimate various telescopes' sensitivities and expected event rates from astrophysical sources of high-energy neutrinos. We find that an ideal detector of km^2 incident area can be sensitive to a…
With an effective telescope area of order 10^4 m^2, a threshold of ~50 GeV and a pointing accuracy of 2.5 degrees, the AMANDA detector represents the first of a new generation of high energy neutrino telescopes, reaching a scale envisaged over 25 years ago. We describe its performance, focussing on the capability to detect halo dark matter particles via their annihilation into neutrinos.
The nature of the dark matter of the Universe is yet unknown and most likely is connected with new physics. The search for its composition is under way through direct and indirect detection. Fundamental physical aspects such as energy threshold, geometry and location are taken into account to investigate proposed neutrino telescopes of km^3 volume sensitivities to dark matter. These sensitivities are just sufficient to test a few WIMP scenarios. Telescopes of km^3 volume, such as IceCube, can definitely discover or exclude superheavy (M > 10^10 GeV) Strong Interacting Massive Particles (Simpzi…
We show that the rate for upward showers from an isotropic cosmic neutrino flux at neutrino telescopes like IceCube is independent of the neutrino-nucleon cross section. For bins that span a relatively narrow range in energy, neither scaling the cross section, nor changing its power-law energy behavior affects the upward shower rate, which depends only on the flux. The neutrino flux can be completely known since its spectral shape can be determined by comparing the rates in neighboring bins. We also show that the downward shower rate varies linearly with cross section with a proportionality co…
Charged Higgs Search at Future Neutrino Telescope and Higgs Factory
East China University of Science and Technology（华东理工大学）；Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院）
We deduce the cosmogenic neutrino flux by jointly analysing ultra high energy cosmic ray data from HiRes-I and II, AGASA and the Pierre Auger Observatory. We make two determinations of the neutrino flux by using a model-dependent method and a model-independent method. The former is well-known, and involves the use of a power-law injection spectrum. The latter is a regularized unfolding procedure. We then use neutrino flux bounds obtained by the RICE experiment to constrain the neutrino-nucleon inelastic cross section at energies inaccessible at colliders. The cross section bounds obtained usin…
At about 40 km off the coast of Toulon (France), anchored at 2475 m deep in the Mediterranean Sea, there is ANTARES: the first undersea neutrino telescope and the only one currently operating. The detector consists of 885 photomultiplier tubes arranged into 12 strings of 450-metres high, with the aim to detect the Cherenkov light induced by the charged superluminal interaction products of neutrinos. Its main scientific target is the search for high-energy (TeV and beyond) neutrinos from cosmic accelerators, as predicted by hadronic interaction models, and the measurement of the cosmic neutrino…
Search for Diffuse Galactic Neutrinos with the Full ANTARES Telescope Dataset
Université de Strasbourg（斯特拉斯堡大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Université de Haute Alsace（上阿尔萨斯大学）；IFIC - Instituto de Física Corpuscular (CSIC - Universitat de València)（IFIC-粒子物理研究所（瓦伦西亚大学-西班牙高等科学研究委员会））；Technical University of Catalonia（加泰罗尼亚理工大学）；Institut d’Investigació per a la Gestió Integrada de les Zones Costaneres (IGIC) - Universitat Politècnica de València（海岸综合管理研究所(IGIC)-巴伦西亚理工大学）；Aix Marseille Univ（艾克斯-马赛大学）；CNRS/IN2P3；CPPM；Université Paris Cité（巴黎西岱大学）；Astroparticule et Cosmologie（天体粒子与宇宙学）；CNES（法国国家空间研究中心）；LAM；National Center for Energy Sciences and Nuclear Techniques（国家能源科学与核技术研究中心）；INFN - Sezione di Bologna（意大利国家核物理研究所-博洛尼组分所）；Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell’Università di Bologna（博洛尼亚大学物理与天文系）
