Würzburg 2018 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 24: Neutrinoastronomie II

T 24.2: Talk

Tuesday, March 20, 2018, 16:45–17:00, Philo-HS1

Improving the description of the astrophysical muon-neutrino spectrum with 9 years of IceCube data — •Jöran Stettner, Christian Haack, René Reimann, and Christopher Wiebusch for the IceCube collaboration — III. Physikalisches Institut B, RWTH Aachen University

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has observed a flux of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos compatible with an unbroken powerlaw energy spectrum. However, complementary analyses on different event topologies and hemispheres do not yield the same spectral index. Here, we focus on the muon-neutrino channel and explore models beyond an unbroken powerlaw to describe the high-energy spectrum. More flexible models, e.g. a broken powerlaw or a powerlaw with exponential cut-off, could both help to understand differences between the measured spectral indices and constrain the physics of cosmic-ray acceleration. The study is based on a high statistics sample of 9 years of muon-neutrinos from the Northern Hemisphere with very low background. We present sensitivities for different models and an approach to extract model-independent information on the flux of astrophysical neutrinos.