Searches for sterile neutrinos with IceCube

Abstract

Sterile neutrinos are a hypothetical additional neutrino species that do not interact via weak interactions. They can resolve anomalies observed in the data of short baseline, reactor and radiochemical neutrino experiments. The presence of sterile neutrinos, when mixed with the active neutrino states, can lead to deviations in the atmospheric neutrino flux. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located at the geographic South Pole, is the first cubic kilometer Cherenkov neutrino detector. It can measure atmospheric neutrinos with a neutrino detection energy down to 10 GeV and up to energies of about 100 TeV. We present results from two searches for sterile neutrino mixing using data from IceCube.