Flavor composition of ultrahigh-energy cosmic neutrinos: Measurement forecasts for in-ice radio-based EeV neutrino telescopes

Abstract

In-ice radio detection is a promising technique to discover and characterize ultrahigh-energy (UHE) neutrinos, with energies above 1017 eV, adopted by present—ARA, ARIANNA, and RNO-G—and planned—IceCube-Gen2—experiments. So far, their ability to measure neutrino flavor had remained unexplored. We show and quantify how the neutrino flavor can be measured with in-ice radio detectors using two complementary detection channels. The first channel, sensitive to νe, identifies them via their charged-current interactions, whose radio emission is elongated in time due to the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect. The second channel, sensitive to νμ and ντ, identifies events made up of multiple showers generated by the muons and taus they generate. We show this in state-of-the-art forecasts geared at IceCube-Gen2, for representative choices of the UHE neutrino flux. This newfound sensitivity could allow us to infer the UHE neutrino flavor composition at their sources—and thus the neutrino production mechanism—and to probe UHE neutrino physics. Published by the American Physical Society 2024