11–15 Jul 2022
Niels Bohr Institute
Europe/Copenhagen timezone
Zoom room: https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/61850277164?pwd=bW9yN3ltTkFXOXRacjNBSUYvWHZYZz09

HNL Searches in IceCube: Current Status and Future Opportunities

12 Jul 2022, 14:24
12m
Auditorium A (NBI)

Auditorium A

NBI

Speaker

Julia Book (Harvard University)

Description

Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs) are GeV-scale right-handed (sterile) neutrinos which have been posited as a possible explanation for light neutrino masses via the seesaw mechanism. HNL production from tau neutrinos and the HNL's subsequent decay would produce a unique double-bang signature in the IceCube detector, enabling a novel search for GeV-scale HNLs at atmospheric neutrino energies. Currently, event reconstruction of these double-bangs is adapted from the astrophysical tau neutrino reconstruction, and does not address the difficulty of reconstructing low-light events more common at these lower energies. The HNL signal in IceCube is therefore currently limited to an excess of cascade-like events, rather than a clear double-bang signal. In this talk, I address the opportunities and challenges of searching for this double-bang signal, and suggest how updated reconstruction and event selection techniques, along with the IceCube upgrade, enhance future opportunities for HNL searches.

Primary authors

Julia Book (Harvard University) Leander Fischer (DESY Zeuthen)

Presentation materials