Theoretically palatable flavor combinations of astrophysical neutrinos

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

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.
Original languageEnglish
Article number161302
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume115
ISSN0031-9007
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Jun 2015
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

13 pages, 12 figures. Matches published version

    Research areas

  • astro-ph.HE, hep-ph

ID: 184745452