Signature of sterile species in atmospheric neutrino data at neutrino telescopes

Abstract

The MiniBooNE results have still not been able to comprehensively rule out the oscillation interpretation of the LSND experiment. So far the so-called short baseline experiments with energy in the MeV range and baseline of few meters have been probing the existence of sterile neutrinos. We show how signatures of these extra sterile states could be obtained in TeV energy range atmospheric neutrinos travelling distances of thousands of kilometers. Atmospheric neutrinos in the TeV range would be detected by the upcoming neutrino telescopes. Of course vacuum oscillations of these neutrinos would be very small. However, we show that resonant matter effects inside the Earth could enhance these very tiny oscillations into near-maximal transitions, which should be hard to miss. We show that imprint of sterile neutrinos could be unambiguously obtained in this high energy atmospheric neutrino event sample. Not only would neutrino telescopes tell the presence of sterile neutrinos, it should also be possible for them to distinguish between the different possible mass and mixing scenarios with additional sterile states.