TY - JOUR

T1 - Testing decay of astrophysical neutrinos with incomplete information

AU - Bustamante, Mauricio

AU - Beacom, John F.

AU - Murase, Kohta

N1 - 11 pages main text, 10 figures, plus technical appendices; improved discussion, improved treatment of nu_tau-initiated showers

PY - 2016/10/6

Y1 - 2016/10/6

N2 - Neutrinos mix and have mass differences, so decays from one to another must occur. But how fast? The best direct limits on non-radiative decays, based on solar and atmospheric neutrinos, are weak, $\tau \gtrsim 10^{-3}$ s ($m$/eV) or much worse. Greatly improved sensitivity, $\tau \sim 10^3$ s ($m$/eV), will eventually be obtained using neutrinos from distant astrophysical sources, but large uncertainties --- in neutrino properties, source properties, and detection aspects --- do not allow this yet. However, there is a way forward now. We show that IceCube diffuse neutrino measurements, supplemented by improvements expected in the near term, can increase sensitivity to $\tau \sim 10$ s ($m$/eV) for all neutrino mass eigenstates. We provide a roadmap for the necessary analyses and show how to manage the many uncertainties. If limits are set, this would definitively rule out the long-considered possibility that neutrino decay affects solar, atmospheric, or terrestrial neutrino experiments.

AB - Neutrinos mix and have mass differences, so decays from one to another must occur. But how fast? The best direct limits on non-radiative decays, based on solar and atmospheric neutrinos, are weak, $\tau \gtrsim 10^{-3}$ s ($m$/eV) or much worse. Greatly improved sensitivity, $\tau \sim 10^3$ s ($m$/eV), will eventually be obtained using neutrinos from distant astrophysical sources, but large uncertainties --- in neutrino properties, source properties, and detection aspects --- do not allow this yet. However, there is a way forward now. We show that IceCube diffuse neutrino measurements, supplemented by improvements expected in the near term, can increase sensitivity to $\tau \sim 10$ s ($m$/eV) for all neutrino mass eigenstates. We provide a roadmap for the necessary analyses and show how to manage the many uncertainties. If limits are set, this would definitively rule out the long-considered possibility that neutrino decay affects solar, atmospheric, or terrestrial neutrino experiments.

KW - astro-ph.HE

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.95.063013

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.95.063013

M3 - Journal article

VL - 95

JO - Physical Review D

JF - Physical Review D

SN - 2470-0010

M1 - 063013

ER -