Search for Nonstandard Neutrino Interactions with IceCube DeepCore

Abstract

As atmospheric neutrinos propagate through the Earth, vacuum-like oscillations are modified by Standard-Model neutral- and charged-current interactions with electrons. Theories beyond the Standard Model introduce heavy, TeV-scale bosons that can produce nonstandard neutrino interactions. These additional interactions may modify the Standard Model matter effect producing a measurable deviation from the prediction for atmospheric neutrino oscillations. The result described in this paper constrains nonstandard interaction parameters, building upon a previous analysis of atmospheric muon-neutrino disappearance with three years of IceCube-DeepCore data. The best fit for the muon to tau flavor changing term is ${ϵ}_{\mu \tau }=-0.0005$, with a 90\% C.L. allowed range of $-0.0067<{ϵ}_{\mu \tau }<0.0081$. This result is more restrictive than recent limits from other experiments for ${ϵ}_{\mu \tau }$. Furthermore, our result is complementary to a recent constraint on ${ϵ}_{\mu \tau }$ using another publicly available IceCube high-energy event selection. Together, they constitute the world's best limits on nonstandard interactions in the $\mu -\tau$ sector.

Comments: 10 pages, 6 figures