Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube Neutrino Telescope

Journal article

We report in detail on searches for eV-scale sterile neutrinos, in the context of a 3+1 model, using eight years of data from the IceCube neutrino telescope. By analyzing the reconstructed energies and zenith angles of 305,735 atmospheric $\nu_\mu$ and $\bar{\nu}_\mu$ events we construct confidence intervals in two analysis spaces: $\sin^2 (2\theta_{24})$ vs. $\Delta m^2_{41}$ under the conservative assumption $\theta_{34}=0$; and $\sin^2(2\theta_{24})$ vs. $\sin^2 (2\theta_{34})$ given sufficiently large $\Delta m^2_{41}$ that fast oscillation features are unresolvable. Detailed discussions of the event selection, systematic uncertainties, and fitting procedures are presented. No strong evidence for sterile neutrinos is found, and the best-fit likelihood is consistent with the no sterile neutrino hypothesis with a p-value of 8% in the first analysis space and 19% in the second.

Authors: Aartsen, MG; Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Sarkar, S; Adams, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Journal: Physical Review D
• Volume: 102
• Issue: 5
• Article number: 52009
• Publication date: 2020-09-30
• Acceptance date: 2020-08-31
• DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.102.052009
• EISSN: 2470-0029
• ISSN: 2470-0010
• Language: English
• Keywords: hep-ph; hep-ex; FFR