Search for nonstandard neutrino interactions with IceCube DeepCore

Author(s): Aartsen, MG; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Aguilar, JA; Ahlers, M; Ahrens, M; Al Samarai, I; Altmann, D; Andeen, K; Anderson, T; Ansseau, I; Anton, G; Arguelles, C; Auffenberg, J; Axani, S; Bagherpour, H; Bai, X; Barron, JP; Barwick, SW; Baum, V; Bay, R; Beatty, JJ; Becker Tjus, J; Becker, KH; Benzvi, S; Berley, D; Bernardini, E; Besson, DZ; Binder, G; Bindig, D; Blaufuss, E; Blot, S; Bohm, C; Borner, M; Bos, F; Bose, D; Boser, S; Botner, O; Bourbeau, E; Bourbeau, J; Bradascio, F; Braun, J; Brayeur, L; Brenzke, M; Bretz, HP; Bron, S; Brostean-Kaiser, J; Burgman, A; Carver, T; Casey, J; Casier, M; Cheung, E; Chirkin, D; Christov, A; Clark, K; Classen, L; Coenders, S; Collin, GH; Conrad, JM; Cowen, DF; Cross, R; Day, M; De Andre, JPAM; De Clercq, C; Delaunay, JJ; Dembinski, H; De Ridder, S; Desiati, P; De Vries, KD; De Wasseige, G; De With, M; Deyoung, T; Diaz-Velez, JC; Di Lorenzo, V; Dujmovic, H; Dumm, JP; Dunkman, M; Dvorak, E; Eberhardt, B; Ehrhardt, T; Eichmann, B; Eller, P; Evenson, PA; Fahey, S; Fazely, AR | Abstract: © 2018 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the »https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/» Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP 3 . As atmospheric neutrinos propagate through the Earth, vacuumlike 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 ϵμτ=-0.0005, with a 90% C.L. allowed range of -0.0067lϵμτl0.0081. This result is more restrictive than recent limits from other experiments for ϵμτ. Furthermore, our result is complementary to a recent constraint on ϵμτ using another publicly available IceCube high-energy event selection. Together, they constitute the world's best limits on nonstandard interactions in the μ-τ sector.