Signature of sterile species in atmospheric neutrino data at neutrino telescopes

IceCube and ANTARES are the world-largest neutrino telescopes. They are successfully taking data, producing a wealth of scientific results. Whereas their main goal is the detection of cosmic neutrinos with energies in the TeV-PeV range, both have demonstrated their capability to measure neutrino oscillations by studying atmospheric neutrinos with energies of 10–50 GeV. After recalling the methods of these measurements and the first published results of these searches, the potential of existing, and planned low-energy extensions of IceCube and KM3Net are discussed. These new detectors will be able to improve the knowledge of the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters, and in particular they might help to understand the neutrino mass hierarchy. Such studies, which use atmospheric neutrinos, could be complemented by measurements in a long-baseline neutrino beam, which is discussed as a long-term future option.

Download Full-text

Sterile Neutrinos with Neutrino Telescopes

Universe ◽

10.3390/universe7110426 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (11) ◽

pp. 426

Author(s):

Carlos A. Argüelles ◽

Jordi Salvado

Keyword(s):

Liquid Scintillator ◽

Atmospheric Neutrino ◽

Neutrino Flux ◽

Electron Neutrino ◽

Anthropogenic Sources ◽

Current Status ◽

Neutrino Experiment ◽

Sterile Neutrinos ◽

Short Baseline ◽

Neutrino Telescopes

Searches for light sterile neutrinos are motivated by the unexpected observation of an electron neutrino appearance in short-baseline experiments, such as the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and the Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment (MiniBooNE). In light of these unexpected results, a campaign using natural and anthropogenic sources to find the light (mass-squared-difference around 1 eV2) sterile neutrinos is underway. Among the natural sources, atmospheric neutrinos provide a unique gateway to search for sterile neutrinos due to the broad range of baseline-to-energy ratios, L/E, and the presence of significant matter effects. Since the atmospheric neutrino flux rapidly falls with energy, studying its highest energy component requires gigaton-scale neutrino detectors. These detectors—often known as neutrino telescopes since they are designed to observe tiny astrophysical neutrino fluxes—have been used to perform searches for light sterile neutrinos, and researchers have found no significant signal to date. This brief review summarizes the current status of searches for light sterile neutrinos with neutrino telescopes deployed in solid and liquid water.

Download Full-text

Measurement of Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations with Very Large Volume Neutrino Telescopes

Advances in High Energy Physics ◽

10.1155/2015/271968 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2015 ◽

pp. 1-24 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

J. P. Yáñez ◽

A. Kouchner

Keyword(s):

Neutrino Oscillation ◽

Neutrino Mass ◽

Large Volume ◽

Neutrino Oscillations ◽

Atmospheric Neutrino ◽

Atmospheric Neutrinos ◽

Neutrino Telescopes ◽

The Way

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 and PINGU. These new projects seek to provide better measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters and eventually determine the neutrino mass ordering. The results from running experiments and the potential from proposed projects are discussed in this review, emphasizing the experimental challenges involved in the measurements.

Download Full-text

The Antares And Km3Net Neutrino Telescopes: Status And Outlook For Acoustic Studies

EPJ Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/epjconf/201921601004 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 216 ◽

pp. 01004

Author(s):

Véronique Van Elewyck

Keyword(s):

Atmospheric Neutrino ◽

Neutrino Flux ◽

High Energy ◽

Neutrino Telescope ◽

Mass Hierarchy ◽

Neutrino Mass Hierarchy ◽

Neutrino Telescopes ◽

Cosmic Neutrino ◽

Under Construction

The ANTARES detector has been operating continuously since 2007 in the Mediterranean Sea, demonstrating the feasibility of an undersea neutrino telescope. Its superior angular resolution in the reconstruction of neutrino events of all flavors results in unprecedented sensitivity for neutrino source searches in the southern sky at TeV energies, so that valuable constraints can be set on the origin of the cosmic neutrino flux discovered by theIceCube detector. The next generation KM3NeT neutrino telescope is now under construction, featuring two detectors with the same technology but different granularity: ARCA designed to search for high energy (TeV-PeV) cosmic neutrinos and ORCA designed to study atmospheric neutrino oscillations at the GeV scale, focusing on the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy. Both detectors use acoustic devices for positioning calibration, and provide testbeds for acoustic neutrino detection.

Download Full-text

Measuring atmospheric neutrino oscillations with neutrino telescopes

Physical Review D ◽

10.1103/physrevd.64.053008 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 64 (5) ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Ivone F. M. Albuquerque ◽

George F. Smoot

Keyword(s):

Neutrino Oscillations ◽

Atmospheric Neutrino ◽

Neutrino Telescopes

Download Full-text

NEUTRINO MIXING: FROM THE BROKEN μ-τ SYMMETRY TO THE BROKEN FRIEDBERG–LEE SYMMETRY

International Journal of Modern Physics E ◽

10.1142/s0218301307006721 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 16 (05) ◽

pp. 1361-1372 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

ZHI-ZHONG XING

Keyword(s):

Mass Operator ◽

Atmospheric Neutrino ◽

Majorana Neutrino ◽

Fermion Mass ◽

Neutrino Mixing ◽

Ultrahigh Energy ◽

Mixing Angle ◽

Neutrino Telescopes ◽

Starting Point ◽

Flavor Mixing

I argue that the observed flavor structures of leptons and quarks might imply the existence of certain flavor symmetries. The latter should be a good starting point to build realistic models towards deeper understanding of the fermion mass spectra and flavor mixing patterns. The μ-τ permutation symmetry serves for such an example to interpret the almost maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing angle (θ23 ~ 45°) and the strongly suppressed CHOOZ neutrino mixing angle (θ13 < 10°). In this talk I like to highlight a new kind of flavor symmetry, the Friedberg–Lee symmetry, for the effective Majorana neutrino mass operator. Luo and I have shown that this symmetry can be broken in an oblique way, such that the lightest neutrino remains massless but an experimentally-favored neutrino mixing pattern is achievable. We get a novel prediction for θ13 in the CP-conserving case: sin θ13 = tan θ12|(1 - tan θ23)/(1 + tan θ23)|. Our scenario can simply be generalized to accommodate CP violation and be combined with the seesaw mechanism. Finally I stress the importance of probing possible effects of μ-τ symmetry breaking either in terrestrial neutrino oscillation experiments or with ultrahigh-energy cosmic neutrino telescopes.

Download Full-text

Theory Predictions for Inclusive atmospheric Neutrino flux

EPJ Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/epjconf/20135209002 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 52 ◽

pp. 09002

Author(s):

Morihiro Honda

Keyword(s):

Atmospheric Neutrino ◽

Neutrino Flux

Download Full-text

RECENT RESULTS FROM K2K

International Journal of Modern Physics A ◽

10.1142/s0217751x02012788 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 17 (24) ◽

pp. 3364-3377 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

◽

C. K. JUNG

Keyword(s):

Neutrino Oscillation ◽

Atmospheric Neutrino ◽

Neutrino Beam ◽

Statistical Fluctuation ◽

Atmospheric Neutrinos ◽

Long Baseline ◽

Neutrino Oscillation Experiment ◽

Oscillation Analysis ◽

The Us ◽

Oscillation Experiment

K2K is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment using a neutrino beam produced at the KEK 12 GeV PS, a near detector complex at KEK and a far detector (Super-Kamiokande) in Kamioka, Japan. The experiment was constructed and is being operated by an international consortium of institutions from Japan, Korea, and the US. The experiment started taking data in 1999 and has successfully taken data for about two years. K2K is the first long beseline neutrino oscillation experiment with a baseline of order hundreds of km and is the first accelerator based neutrino oscillation experiment that is sensitive to the Super-Kamiokande allowed region obtained from the atmospheric neutrino oscillation analysis. A total of 44 events have been observed in the far detector during the period of June 1999 to April 2001 corresponding to 3.85 × 1019 protons on target. The observation is consistent with the neutrino oscillation expectations based on the oscillation parameters derived from the atmospheric neutrinos, and the probability that this is a statistical fluctuation of non-oscillation expectation of [Formula: see text] is less than 3%.

Download Full-text