Exploring neutrino loss with diffuse astrophysical neutrino fluxes
Abstract
We study the sensitivity of the diffuse high-energy neutrino flux observed in IceCube to new-physics effects resulting in an exponential flux attenuation along the trajectory, such as invisible neutrino decay or new interactions with the background encountered during propagation. We argue that, even though the sources and production redshifts of these astrophysical neutrinos are unknown, conservative energy-conservation arguments allow to severely constrain neutrino loss in most scenarios beyond the strongest existing bounds. By performing a fit to the High-Energy Starting Events from IceCube, we quantify the bounds and study their variation with the energy dependence of the attenuation, the assumed redshift distribution of the neutrino sources, and whether the attenuation affects neutrinos exclusively or no. We also show that including an energy-dependent attenuation at the level allowed in the fit may impact the determination of the spectral index of the diffuse flux.
Versions
Related
- Neutrino helicity oscillations in astrophysical environments: A many-body approach
- Constraining tau-sterile neutrino mixing with high-energy astrophysical neutrinos
- Charged-current neutrino opacity within the relativistic Hartree-Fock framework for astrophysical simulations of core-collapse supernovae and binary neutron star mergers
- Supernova Gamma-Ray Echo as an Astrophysical Near Detector for Galactic Neutrino Propagation
- Search for an all-sky and a Galactic Ridge diffuse neutrino emission with the first 2 years of KM3NeT/ARCA data
BibTeX
@misc{esteban2026exploring,
title = {{Exploring neutrino loss with diffuse astrophysical neutrino fluxes}},
author = {Ivan Esteban and Alberto M. Gago and M. C. Gonzalez-Garcia and Gabriel D. Zapata},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.13955},
eprint = {2605.13955},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.13955},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Exploring neutrino loss with diffuse astrophysical neutrino fluxes
AU - Ivan Esteban
AU - Alberto M. Gago
AU - M. C. Gonzalez-Garcia
AU - Gabriel D. Zapata
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/07
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.13955
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.13955
AB - We study the sensitivity of the diffuse high-energy neutrino flux observed in IceCube to new-physics effects resulting in an exponential flux attenuation along the trajectory, such as invisible neutrino decay or new interactions with the background encountered during propagation. We argue that, even though the sources and production redshifts of these astrophysical neutrinos are unknown, conservative energy-conservation arguments allow to severely constrain neutrino loss in most scenarios beyond the strongest existing bounds. By performing a fit to the High-Energy Starting Events from IceCube, we quantify the bounds and study their variation with the energy dependence of the attenuation, the assumed redshift distribution of the neutrino sources, and whether the attenuation affects neutrinos exclusively or no. We also show that including an energy-dependent attenuation at the level allowed in the fit may impact the determination of the spectral index of the diffuse flux.
ER -