Signatures of sterile neutrino mixing in high-energy cosmic neutrino flux

Abstract

Even after the negative result by the MiniBooNE experiment, we can still have a (3+1)-scheme with one sterile neutrino whose mixing lies within the allowed region by MiniBooNE. In this note we discuss the possible effects of such a scheme on the flavor ratio of high-energy cosmic neutrinos from cosmologically distant astrophysical sources. It is shown that in principle there is still a chance to observe deviation from the standard three flavor scenario in the flavor ratio of the high-energy cosmic neutrinos. It is proposed to see the energy spectrum to cope with the theoretical uncertainties which were recently pointed out by Lipari, Lusignoli and Meloni. It is emphasized that the $\nu_\mu-\nu_\tau$ ratio is relatively insensitive to the theoretical uncertainties and therefore this ratio is the key ingredient to look for the signatures of the sterile neutrino scheme. Although the statistics of data from one source in the next generation of neutrino telescopes are estimated not to be sufficient to distinguish the three and four family schemes, if we can gain statistics by, e.g., summing over data from many sources, then it might be possible to have a signature for the (3+1)-scheme.