Superheavy Particle Origin of IceCube PeV Neutrino Events

Abstract

We interpret the PeV shower events observed by the IceCube collaboration as an s-channel enhancement of neutrino-quark scattering by a leptoquark that couples to the tau-flavor and light quarks. With a leptoquark mass of ~ 0.6 TeV and a steep 1/E^{2.3} neutrino flux, charged-current scattering gives shower events at ~ 1 PeV and neutral-current scattering gives shower events at ~ 0.5 PeV. This mechanism is also consistent with the paucity of muon-track events above 100 TeV.

Comments: 10 pages, 4 figures. The version appears in Phys. Lett. B, October 2013