Probing quantum gravity with elastic interactions of ultrahigh-energy neutrinos

Recently, the ANITA collaboration announced the detection of new, unsettling upgoing Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) events. Understanding their origin is pressing to ensure success of the incoming UHE neutrino program. In this work, we study their internal consistency and the implications of the lack of similar events in IceCube. We introduce a generic, simple parametrization to study the compatibility between these two observatories in Standard Model-like and Beyond Standard Model scenarios: an incoming flux of particles that interact with Earth nucleons with cross section σ, producing particle showers along with long-lived particles that decay with lifetime τ and generate a shower that explains ANITA observations. We find that the ANITA angular distribution imposes significant constraints, and when including null observations from IceCube only τ ~ 10−3–10−2 s and σ ~ 10−33– 10−32 cm2 can explain the data. This hypothesis is testable with future IceCube data. Finally, we discuss a specific model that can realize this scenario. Our analysis highlights the importance of simultaneous observations by high-energy optical neutrino telescopes and new UHE radio detectors to uncover cosmogenic neutrinos or discover new physics.

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IceCube and the origin of ANITA-IV events

Bertólez-Martínez

Argüelles

Esteban

et al. 2023

J. High Energ. Phys.

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A ν window onto leptoquarks?

Kirk,

Okawa,

2023

J. High Energ. Phys.

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Upcoming neutrino telescopes promise a new window onto the interactions of neutrinos with matter at ultrahigh energies (Eν = 107–1010 GeV), and the possibility to detect deviations from the Standard Model predictions. In this paper, we update previous predictions for the enhancement of the neutrino-nucleon cross-section for motivated leptoquark models and show the latest neutrino physics bound, as well as analyse the latest LHC pair production and Drell-Yan data, and flavour constraints (some of which were previously missed). We find that, despite the next generation of neutrino experiments probing the highest energies, they will not be enough to be competitive with collider searches.

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Discovery potential of the Glashow resonance in an air shower neutrino telescope*

Huang 黄

2024

Chinese Phys. C

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The in-ice or in-water Cherenkov neutrino telescope such as IceCube has already proved its power in measuring the Glashow resonance by searching for the bump around $E^{}_{\rm \nu} = 6.3~{\rm PeV}$ arising from the $W$-boson production. There are many proposals in the next few decades that observe cosmic tau neutrinos with extensive air showers, also known as tau neutrino telescopes. As has been recognized, the air shower telescope is in principle sensitive to the Glashow resonance via the channel $W \to \tau \nu^{}_{\tau}$ followed by the tau decay in the air, such as TAMBO with a geometric area around $500~{\rm km^2}$. With a thorough numerical analysis, we find that the discovery significance can be up to $90\%$ with a TAMBO-like setup if PeV neutrinos mainly originate from neutron decays, considering the flux parameters measured by IceCube as the input. The presence of new physics affecting the neutrino flavor composition can also increase the significance. However, if ultrahigh-energy neutrinos are dominantly produced from meson decays, it will be statistically difficult for a rather advanced proposal like TAMBO to discriminate the Glashow resonance induced by $\overline{\nu}^{}_{e}$ from the intrinsic $\nu^{}_{\tau}/\overline{\nu}^{}_{\tau}$ background. We have identified several limitations for those telescopes on hunting the resonance compared to the in-ice or in-water telescope: (i) a suppressed branching ratio of $11\%$ for the decay $W \to \tau \nu^{}_{\tau}$; (ii) the smearing effect and the reduced acceptance because the daughter neutrino takes away $\langle y \rangle \sim 75\%$ of the energy from the $W$ decay; (iii) a large attenuation effect for Earth-skimming neutrinos with the resonance.

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Probing quantum gravity with elastic interactions of ultrahigh-energy neutrinos

Cited by 4 publications

References 70 publications

IceCube and the origin of ANITA-IV events

IceCube and the origin of ANITA-IV events

A ν window onto leptoquarks?

Discovery potential of the Glashow resonance in an air shower neutrino telescope*

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