Searches for Sterile Neutrinos with the IceCube Detector

The IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole has measured the atmospheric muon neutrino spectrum as a function of zenith angle and energy in the approximate 320 GeV to 20 TeV range, to search for the oscillation signatures of light sterile neutrinos. No evidence for anomalous νμ or ¯νμ disappearance is observed in either of two independently developed analyses, each using one year of atmospheric neutrino data. New exclusion limits are placed on the parameter space of the 3+1 model, in which muon antineutrinos experience a strong Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein-resonant oscillation. The exclusion limits extend to sin 22θ24≤0.02 at Δm2∼0.3 eV2 at the 90% confidence level. The allowed region from global analysis of appearance experiments, including LSND and MiniBooNE, is excluded at approximately the 99% confidence level for the global best-fit value of |Ue4|

Constraints on Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic-Ray Sources from a Search for Neutrinos above 10 PeV with IceCube

We report constraints on the sources of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) above 109 GeV, based on an analysis of seven years of IceCube data. This analysis efficiently selects very high- energy neutrino-induced events which have deposited energies from 5×105 GeV to above 1011 GeV Two neutrino-induced events with an estimated deposited energy of (2.6±0.3)×106 GeV, the highest neutrino energy observed so far, and (7.7±2.0)×105 GeV were detected. The atmospheric background-only hypothesis of detecting these events is rejected at 3.6σ. The hypothesis that the observed events are of cosmogenic origin is also rejected at >99% CL because of the limited deposited energy and the nonobservation of events at higher energy, while their observation is consistent with an astrophysical origin. Our limits on cosmogenic neutrino fluxes disfavor the UHECR sources having a cosmological evolution stronger than the star formation rate, e.g., active galactic nuclei and γ-ray bursts, assuming proton-dominated UHECRs. Constraints on UHECR sources including mixed and heavy UHECR compositions are obtained for models of neutrino production within UHECR sources. Our limit disfavors a significant part of parameter space for active galactic nuclei and new-born pulsar models. These limits on the ultrahigh-energy neutrino flux models are the most stringent to date

SEARCH FOR SOURCES OF HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRONS WITH FOUR YEARS OF DATA FROM THE ICETOP DETECTOR

IceTop is an air-shower array located on the Antarctic ice sheet at the geographic South Pole. IceTop can detect an astrophysical flux of neutrons from Galactic sources as an excess of cosmic-ray air showers arriving from the source direction. Neutrons are undeflected by the Galactic magnetic field and can typically travel 10 (E/PeV) pc before decay. Two searches are performed using 4 yr of the IceTop data set to look for a statistically significant excess of events with energies above 10 PeV (1016 eV) arriving within a small solid angle. The all-sky search method covers from −90° to approximately −50° in declination. No significant excess is found. A targeted search is also performed, looking for significant correlation with candidate sources in different target sets. This search uses a higher-energy cut (100 PeV) since most target objects lie beyond 1 kpc. The target sets include pulsars with confirmed TeV energy photon fluxes and high-mass X-ray binaries. No significant correlation is found for any target set. Flux upper limits are determined for both searches, which can constrain Galactic neutron sources and production scenarios

OBSERVATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A COSMIC MUON NEUTRINO FLUX FROM THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE USING SIX YEARS OF ICECUBE DATA

The IceCube Collaboration has previously discovered a high-energy astrophysical neutrino flux using neutrino events with interaction vertices contained within the instrumented volume of the IceCube detector. We present a complementary measurement using charged current muon neutrino events where the interaction vertex can be outside this volume. As a consequence of the large muon range the effective area is significantly larger but the field of view is restricted to the Northern Hemisphere. IceCube data from 2009 through 2015 have been analyzed using a likelihood approach based on the reconstructed muon energy and zenith angle. At the highest neutrino energies between 194 TeV and 7.8 PeV a significant astrophysical contribution is observed, excluding a purely atmospheric origin of these events at 5.6s significance. The data are well described by an isotropic, unbroken power-law flux with a normalization at 100 TeV neutrino energy of - ´ + - - -- - 0.90 10 GeV cm s sr 0.27 0.30 18 1 2 1 1 ( ) and a hard spectral index of g = 2.13 0.13. The observed spectrum is harder in comparison to previous IceCube analyses with lower energy thresholds which may indicate a break in the astrophysical neutrino spectrum of unknown origin. The highest-energy event observed has a reconstructed muon energy of (4.5 1.2 Pe ) V which implies a probability of less than 0.005% for this event to be of atmospheric origin. Analyzing the arrival directions of all events with reconstructed muon energies above 200 TeV no correlation with known γ-ray sources was found. Using the high statistics of atmospheric neutrinos we report the current best constraints on a prompt atmospheric muon neutrino flux originating from charmed meson decays which is below 1.06 in units of the flux normalization of the model in Enberg et al

All-flavour search for neutrinos from dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way with IceCube/DeepCore

We present the first IceCube search for a signal of dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way using all-flavour neutrino-induced particle cascades. The analysis focuses on the DeepCore sub-detector of IceCube, and uses the surrounding IceCube strings as a veto region in order to select starting events in the DeepCore volume. We use 329 live-days of data from IceCube operating in its 86-string con-figuration during 2011–2012. No neutrino excess is found, the final result being compatible with the background-only hypothesis. From this null result, we derive upper limits on the velocity-averaged self-annihilation cross-section, σAv, for dark matter candidate masses ranging from 30 GeV up to 10 TeV, assuming both a cuspy and a flat-cored dark matter halo profile. For dark matter masses between 200 GeV and 10 TeV, the results improve on all previous IceCube results on σAv, reaching a level of 10−23 cm3 s−1, depending on the annihilation channel assumed, for a cusped NFW profile. The analysis demonstrates that all-flavour searches are competitive with muon channel searches despite the intrinsically worse angular resolution of cascades compared to muon tracks in IceCube.SCOAP

Study of Zγ events and limits on anomalous ZZγ and Zγγ couplings in pp̄ collisions at s=1.96TeV

We present a measurement of the Zγ production cross section and limits on anomalous ZZγ and Zγγ couplings for form-factor scales of Λ=750 and 1000 GeV. The measurement is based on 138 (152) candidates in the eeγ (μμγ) final state using 320(290)pb-1 of pp̄ collisions at s=1.96TeV. The 95% C.L. limits on real and imaginary parts of individual anomalous couplings are |h10,30Z|<0.23, |h20,40Z|<0.020, |h10,30γ|<0.23, and |h20,40γ|<0.019 for Λ=1000GeV. © 2005 The American Physical Society

Z boson production in Pb+Pb collisions at √Snn = 5.02 TeV measured by the ATLAS experiment

The production yield of Z bosons is measured in the electron and muon decay channels in Pb+Pb collisions at √S = 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Data from the 2015 LHC run corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.49 nb are used for the analysis. The Z boson yield, normalised by the total number of minimum-bias events and the mean nuclear thickness function, is measured as a function of dilepton rapidity and event centrality. The measurements in Pb+Pb collisions are compared with similar measurements made in proton-proton collisions at the same centre-of-mass energy. The nuclear modification factor is found to be consistent with unity for all centrality intervals. The results are compared with theoretical predictions obtained at next-to-leading order using nucleon and nuclear parton distribution functions. The normalised Z boson yields in Pb+Pb collisions lie 1-3σ above the predictions. The nuclear modification factor measured as a function of rapidity agrees with unity and is consistent with a next-to-leading-order QCD calculation including the isospin effect. nn -