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High-energy neutrino astrophysics

Nature Physics volume 13, pages 232–238 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

The chargeless, weakly interacting neutrinos are ideal astronomical messengers as they travel through space without scattering, absorption or deflection. But this weak interaction also makes them notoriously difficult to detect, leading to neutrino observatories requiring large-scale detectors. A few years ago, the IceCube experiment discovered neutrinos originating beyond the Sun with energies bracketed by those of the highest energy gamma rays and cosmic rays. I discuss how these high-energy neutrinos can be detected and what they can tell us about the origins of cosmic rays and about dark matter.

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Figure 1: Light pools produced in IceCube by showers initiated by an electron or a tau neutrino, or the neutral current interaction of a neutrino of any of the three flavours.
Figure 2: Spectrum of secondary muons initiated by muon neutrinos that have traversed the Earth, that is, with zenith angle less than 5° above the horizon, as a function of the energy they deposit inside the detector.
Figure 3: Deposited energies, by neutrinos interacting inside IceCube, observed in four years of data.
Figure 4: Arrival directions of neutrinos in the four-year starting-event sample in Galactic coordinates.
Figure 5: Figure showing that the astrophysical neutrino flux (black line) observed by IceCube matches the corresponding cascaded gamma-ray flux (red line) observed by Fermi.
Figure 6: Upper limits at 90% confidence level on the spin-dependent neutralino–proton cross-section assuming that the neutrinos are produced by and W+W− annihilation.

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Acknowledgements

Discussion with collaborators inside and outside the IceCube Collaboration, too many to be listed, have greatly shaped this presentation. Thanks. This research was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation under Grant Nos ANT-0937462 and PHY-1306958 and by the University of Wisconsin Research Committee with funds granted by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

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  1. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 5293 Chamberlin Hall, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

    Francis Halzen

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Correspondence to Francis Halzen.

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Halzen, F. High-energy neutrino astrophysics. Nature Phys 13, 232–238 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3816

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