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1. Search for a light sterile neutrino with 7.5 years of IceCube DeepCore data

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.072007  

   Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Agarwalla, S K; Aguilar, J A; Ahlers, M; Alameddine, J M; Amin, N M; Andeen, K; Argüelles, C; et al (October 2024, Physical Review D)

   We present a search for an eV-scale sterile neutrino using 7.5 years of data from the IceCube DeepCore detector. The analysis uses a sample of 21,914 events with energies between 5 and 150 GeV to search for sterile neutrinos through atmospheric muon neutrino disappearance. Improvements in event selection and treatment of systematic uncertainties provide greater statistical power compared to previous DeepCore sterile neutrino searches. Our results are compatible with the absence of mixing between active and sterile neutrino states, and we place constraints on the mixing matrix elements $|U_{\mu 4}{|}^2<0.0534$and $|U_{\tau 4}{|}^2<0.0574$at 90% CL under the assumption that $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{41}^2\ge 1{\mathrm{eV}}^2$. These null results add to the growing tension between anomalous appearance results and constraints from disappearance searches in the $3+1$sterile neutrino landscape. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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2. Search for an eV-Scale Sterile Neutrino Using Improved High-Energy ${\nu }_{\mu }$ Event Reconstruction in IceCube

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.201804  

   Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Agarwalla, S K; Aguilar, J A; Ahlers, M; Alameddine, J M; Amin, N M; Andeen, K; Argüelles, C; et al (November 2024, Physical Review Letters)

   This Letter presents the result of a $3+1$sterile neutrino search using 10.7 yr of IceCube data. We analyze atmospheric muon neutrinos that traverse the Earth with energies ranging from 0.5 to 100 TeV, incorporating significant improvements in modeling neutrino flux and detector response compared to earlier studies. Notably, for the first time, we categorize data into starting and throughgoing events, distinguishing neutrino interactions with vertices inside or outside the instrumented volume, to improve energy resolution. The best-fit point for a $3+1$model is found to be at ${\sin }^2\left(2{\theta }_{24}\right)=0.16$and $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{41}^2=3.5{\mathrm{eV}}^2$, which agrees with previous iterations of this Letter. The result is consistent with the null hypothesis of no sterile neutrinos with a $p$value of 3.1%. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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3. Methods and stability tests associated with the sterile neutrino search using improved high-energy ${\nu }_{\mu }$ event reconstruction in IceCube

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.092009  

   Abbasi, R; Ackermann, M; Adams, J; Agarwalla, S K; Aguilar, J A; Ahlers, M; Alameddine, J M; Amin, N M; Andeen, K; Argüelles, C; et al (November 2024, Physical Review D)

   We provide supporting details for the search for a $3+1$sterile neutrino using data collected over 10.7 years at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The analysis uses atmospheric muon-flavored neutrinos from 0.5 to 100 TeV that traverse Earth to reach the IceCube detector and finds a best-fit point at ${\sin }^2\left(2{\theta }_{24}\right)=0.16$and $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{41}^2=3.5{\mathrm{eV}}^2$with a goodness-of-fit p value of 12% and consistency with the null hypothesis of no oscillations to sterile neutrinos with a p value of 3.1%. Several improvements were made over past analyses, which are reviewed in this article, including upgrades to the reconstruction and the study of sources of systematic uncertainty. We provide details of the fit quality and discuss stability tests that split the data for separate samples, comparing results. We find that the fits are consistent between split datasets. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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4. Measurement of Electron Antineutrino Oscillation Amplitude and Frequency via Neutron Capture on Hydrogen at Daya Bay

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.151801  

   An, F P; Bai, W D; Balantekin, A B; Bishai, M; Blyth, S; Cao, G F; Cao, J; Chang, J F; Chang, Y; Chen, H S; et al (October 2024, Physical Review Letters)

   This Letter reports the first measurement of the oscillation amplitude and frequency of reactor antineutrinos at Daya Bay via neutron capture on hydrogen using 1958 days of data. With over 3.6 million signal candidates, an optimized candidate selection, improved treatment of backgrounds and efficiencies, refined energy calibration, and an energy response model for the capture-on-hydrogen sensitive region, the relative ${\overline{\nu }}_e$rates and energy spectra variation among the near and far detectors gives ${\sin }^{2}2{\theta }_{13}=0.0759_{-0.0049}^{+0.0050}$and $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{32}^2=\left(2.72_{-0.15}^{+0.14}\right)\times {10}^{-3}{\mathrm{eV}}^2$assuming the normal neutrino mass ordering, and $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{32}^2=(-2.83_{-0.14}^{+0.15})\times {10}^{-3}{\mathrm{eV}}^2$for the inverted neutrino mass ordering. This estimate of ${\sin }^{2}2{\theta }_{13}$is consistent with and essentially independent from the one obtained using the capture-on-gadolinium sample at Daya Bay. The combination of these two results yields ${\sin }^{2}2{\theta }_{13}=0.0833\pm 0.0022$, which represents an 8% relative improvement in precision regarding the Daya Bay full 3158-day capture-on-gadolinium result. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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5. Solar neutrinos and ${\nu }_2$ visible decays to ${\nu }_1$

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.013003  

   de_Gouvêa, André; Weill, Jean; Sen, Manibrata (January 2024, Physical Review D)

   Experimental bounds on the neutrino lifetime depend on the nature of the neutrinos and the details of the potentially new physics responsible for neutrino decay. In the case where the decays involve active neutrinos in the final state, the neutrino masses also qualitatively impact how these manifest themselves experimentally. In order to further understand the impact of nonzero neutrino masses, we explore how observations of solar neutrinos constrain a very simple toy model. We assume that neutrinos are Dirac fermions and there is a new massless scalar that couples to neutrinos such that a heavy neutrino— ${\nu }_2$with mass $m_2$—can decay into a lighter neutrino— ${\nu }_1$with mass $m_1$—and a massless scalar. We find that the constraints on the new physics coupling depend, sometimes significantly, on the ratio of the daughter-to-parent neutrino masses and that, for large-enough values of the new physics coupling, the “dark side” of the solar neutrino parameter space— ${\sin }^2{\theta }_{12}\sim 0.7$—provides a reasonable fit to solar neutrino data, if only ${}^8\mathrm{B}$or ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$neutrino data alone are considered, but no allowed region is found in the combined analysis. Our results generalize to other neutrino-decay scenarios, including those that mediate ${\nu }_2\to {\nu }_1{\overline{\nu }}_3{\nu }_3$when the neutrino mass ordering is inverted mass and $m_2>m_1\gg m_3$, the mass of ${\nu }_3$. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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