18–24 Jun 2017
UC Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA
US/Pacific timezone

Neutrino absorption in the Earth and measurement of the neutrino-nucleon cross-section at multi-TeV energies with IceCube

20 Jun 2017, 18:10
20m
Pacific Ballroom AB (UC Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA)

Pacific Ballroom AB

UC Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

Working Group Sessions Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology Working Group Working Group: Astroparticle physics and cosmology

Speaker

Gary Binder (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/University of California Berkeley)

Description

At the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, atmospheric and astrophysical neutrino fluxes become attenuated after passing through the Earth at energies above 40 TeV. This provides a unique method to measure the neutrino-nucleon cross section at energies significantly beyond previous accelerator-based approaches that reach 400 GeV. Here we report on the first measurement of neutrino absorption in the Earth, using a sample 10,784 energetic upward-going neutrino-induced muons observed in one year of IceCube data. From a fit to the two-dimensional distribution of muon energy and zenith angle, we measure the cross-section to be 1.30+0.21-0.19 (stat.) +0.39-0.43 (syst.) times the Standard Model expectation in an energy range from 6.3 TeV to 980 TeV.

Primary author

Dr Sandra Miarecki (United States Air Force Academy)

Co-authors

Gary Binder (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/University of California Berkeley) Dr Spencer Klein (LBNL & UC Berkeley)

Presentation materials