Characterization of the Three-Flavor Composition of Cosmic Neutrinos with IceCube

2025/10/28 by Abbasi, R., Ackermann, M., Adams, J. +429 · 2 citations
#FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.24957

Abstract

Neutrinos oscillate over cosmic distances. Using 11.4 years of IceCube data, the flavor composition of the all-sky neutrino flux from 5 TeV--10 PeV is studied. We report the first measurement down to the O(TeV) scale using events classified into three flavor-dependent morphologies. The best fit flavor ratio is f_e:f_μ:f_τ = 0.30:0.37:0.33, consistent with the standard three-flavor neutrino oscillation model. Each fraction is constrained to be >0 at > 90% confidence level, assuming a broken power law for cosmic neutrinos. We infer the flavor composition of cosmic neutrinos at their sources, and find production via neutron decay lies outside the 99% confidence interval.

Citations

• Evidence for a Spectral Break or Curvature in the Spectrum of Astrophysical Neutrinos from 5 TeV to 10 PeV
• Improved measurements of the TeV--PeV extragalactic neutrino spectrum from joint analyses of IceCube tracks and cascades
• GLOBAL ANALYSIS OF NEUTRINO OSCILLATIONS
• The fate of hints: updated global analysis of three-flavor neutrino oscillations
• Calculation of conventional and prompt lepton fluxes at very high energy
• Cosmic Ray Energy Spectrum from Measurements of Air Showers
• Spectrum of cosmic-ray nucleons, kaon production, and the atmospheric muon charge ratio
• Beyond Standard Model Physics
• The Large-Sample Distribution of the Likelihood Ratio for Testing Composite Hypotheses

Cited by

• Divergence in tracing the flavors of astrophysical neutrinos: can JUNO help IceCube?
• Probing Neutrino Flavor Composition with the Glashow Resonance at Tau Air-Shower Neutrino Telescopes

Related

• Measurement of the Three-Flavor Composition of Astrophysical Neutrinos with Contained IceCube Events
• Neutrino flavor composition using High Energy Starting Events with IceCube
• On the flavor composition of the high-energy neutrinos in IceCube
• The flavor distribution of Cosmic Neutrinos
• First Double Cascade Tau Neutrino Candidates in IceCube and a New Measurement of the Flavor Composition