Probing Neutrino Flavor Composition with the Glashow Resonance at Tau Air-Shower Neutrino Telescopes

Abstract

The flavor composition of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos encodes information about their production and propagation. The Glashow resonance, $\bar{\nu}_e + e^-\to W^-$, provides a unique way to distinguish antineutrinos from neutrinos and thereby extends the reach of flavor composition studies. Proposed tau air-shower neutrino telescopes target Earth-skimming and mountain-skimming $\nu_\tau$ above a PeV, but through the decay $W^-\to \bar{\nu}_\tau+\tau^-$ they are also sensitive to $\bar{\nu}_e$. These experiments can therefore measure the ratio of $\bar{\nu}_e$ to $\nu_\tau+\bar{\nu}_\tau$ fluxes. We evaluate this prospect with explicit simulations and project sensitivities for TAMBO and TRINITY, assuming 10 years of operation. We find that mountain-skimming geometries yield substantially higher $\bar{\nu}_e$ acceptance than Earth-skimming ones due to the shorter path length in rock. For standard astrophysical source scenarios, our projections show that differentiating $pp$ and $p\gamma$ production, including their muon-damped scenarios, is challenging with a standalone measurement by tau air-shower experiments in their currently designed configurations, though optimistically the flux ratio can be constrained to $\lesssim$2 at 1$\sigma$. A $\bar{\nu}_e$-rich flux, as expected from neutron-decay sources or from certain new physics models, would stand out from the standard pion-production scenarios and can otherwise be constrained.