Probing leptoquark production at IceCube

Luis A Anchordoqui,Haim Goldberg,Daniel Gomez Dumm,Francis Halzen,Carlos A García Canal

doi:10.1103/physrevd.74.125021

Abstract

We emphasize the inelasticity distribution of events detected at the IceCube neutrino telescope as an important tool for revealing new physics. This is possible because the unique energy resolution at this facility allows to separately assign the energy fractions for emergent muons and taus in neutrino interactions. As a particular example, we explore the possibility of probing second and third generation leptoquark parameter space (coupling and mass). We show that production of leptoquarks with masses (greater-or-similar sign)250 GeV and diagonal generation couplings of O(1) can be directly tested if the cosmic neutrino flux is at the Waxman-Bahcall level.

Highlights

Leptoquarks are SU 3-colored particles which simultaneously carry nonzero baryon and lepton quantum numbers
For first generation leptoquark trilinear couplings which are much smaller than gauge strength, the mass bounds are greatly weakened
In this paper we have introduced the measurement of inelasticity as a powerful tool for probing new physics in cosmic neutrino interactions

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Leptoquarks are SU 3-colored particles which simultaneously carry nonzero baryon and lepton quantum numbers. In the case of the third generation, a lower limit of 219 GeV has been recently reported by the D0 Collaboration [9], by tagging on 2b jets missing energy For this value of the leptoquark mass, the decay into t is largely suppressed compared to the b channel, so that the mass bound is nearly independent of even the branching fraction. We explore the possibility of probing second and third generation leptoquark parameter space (coupling and mass) with the IceCube neutrino detection facility [10] This experiment, located below the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet at the geographic South pole, is required to be sensitive to the best estimates of potential cosmic ray neutrino fluxes.

LEPTOQUARK PHENOMENOLOGY

SENSITIVITY REACH AT ICECUBE

Findings

CONCLUSIONS