Tau Appearance from High-Energy Neutrino Interactions

High-energy muon and electron neutrinos yield a non-negligible flux of tau neutrinos as they propagate through Earth. In this Letter, we address the impact of this additional component in the PeV and EeV energy regimes for the first time. Above 300 TeV, this contribution is predicted to be significa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 128; no. 17; p. 171101
Main Authors Soto, A Garcia, Zhelnin, P, Safa, I, Argüelles, C A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 29.04.2022
Online AccessGet more information

Cover

More Information
Summary:High-energy muon and electron neutrinos yield a non-negligible flux of tau neutrinos as they propagate through Earth. In this Letter, we address the impact of this additional component in the PeV and EeV energy regimes for the first time. Above 300 TeV, this contribution is predicted to be significantly larger than the atmospheric background, and it alters current and future neutrino telescopes' capabilities to discover a cosmic tau-neutrino flux. Further, we demonstrate that Earth-skimming neutrino experiments, designed to observe tau neutrinos, will be sensitive to cosmogenic neutrinos even in extreme scenarios without a primary tau-neutrino component.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.171101