W -boson and trident production in TeV-PeV neutrino observatories
Abstract
Detecting TeV-PeV cosmic neutrinos provides crucial tests of neutrino physics and astrophysics. The statistics of IceCube and the larger proposed IceCube-Gen2 demand calculations of neutrino-nucleus interactions subdominant to deep-inelastic scattering, which is mediated by weak-boson couplings to nuclei. The largest such interactions are W -boson and trident production, which are mediated instead through photon couplings to nuclei. In a companion paper [B. Zhou and J. F. Beacom, following Paper, Neutrino-nucleus cross sections for W -boson and trident production, Phys. Rev. D 101, 036011 (2020)., 10.1103/PhysRevD.101.036011], we make the most comprehensive and precise calculations of those interactions at high energies. In this paper, we study their phenomenological consequences. We find that: (1) These interactions are dominated by the production of on-shell W bosons, which carry most of the neutrino energy; (2) the cross section on water/iron can be as large as 7.5 %/14 % that of charged-current deep-inelastic scattering, much larger than the quoted uncertainty on the latter, (3) attenuation in Earth is increased by as much as 15%; (4) W -boson production on nuclei exceeds that through the Glashow resonance on electrons by a factor of ≃20 for the best-fit IceCube spectrum; (5) the primary signals are showers that will significantly affect the detection rate in IceCube-Gen2; a small fraction of events give unique signatures that may be detected sooner.
- Publication:
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Physical Review D
- Pub Date:
- February 2020
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevD.101.036010
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1910.10720
- Bibcode:
- 2020PhRvD.101c6010Z
- Keywords:
-
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- High Energy Physics - Experiment
- E-Print:
- Main text is 10 pages, 1 table, and 7 figures. Minor changes