Theoretically palatable flavor combinations of astrophysical neutrinos

TY - JOUR

T1 - Theoretically palatable flavor combinations of astrophysical neutrinos

AU - Bustamante, Mauricio

AU - Beacom, John F.

AU - Winter, Walter

N1 - 13 pages, 12 figures. Matches published version

PY - 2015/10/15

Y1 - 2015/10/15

N2 - The flavor composition of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos can reveal the physics governing their production, propagation, and interaction. The IceCube Collaboration has published the first experimental determination of the ratio of the flux in each flavor to the total. We present, as a theoretical counterpart, new results for the allowed ranges of flavor ratios at Earth for arbitrary flavor ratios in the sources. Our results will allow IceCube to more quickly identify when their data imply standard physics, a general class of new physics with arbitrary (incoherent) combinations of mass eigenstates, or new physics that goes beyond that, e.g., with terms that dominate the Hamiltonian at high energy.

AB - The flavor composition of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos can reveal the physics governing their production, propagation, and interaction. The IceCube Collaboration has published the first experimental determination of the ratio of the flux in each flavor to the total. We present, as a theoretical counterpart, new results for the allowed ranges of flavor ratios at Earth for arbitrary flavor ratios in the sources. Our results will allow IceCube to more quickly identify when their data imply standard physics, a general class of new physics with arbitrary (incoherent) combinations of mass eigenstates, or new physics that goes beyond that, e.g., with terms that dominate the Hamiltonian at high energy.

KW - astro-ph.HE

KW - hep-ph

U2 - 10.1103/physrevlett.115.161302

DO - 10.1103/physrevlett.115.161302

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0031-9007

VL - 115

JO - Physical Review Letters

JF - Physical Review Letters

M1 - 161302

ER -