Probing the origin of cosmic-rays with extremely high energy neutrinos using the IceCube Observatory

Understand

We have searched for extremely high energy neutrinos using data taken with the IceCube detector between May 2010 and May 2012.

• Two neutrino induced particle shower events with energies around 1 PeV were observed, as reported previously.
• In this work, we investigate whether these events could originate from cosmogenic neutrinos produced in the interactions of ultra-high energy cosmic-rays with ambient photons while propagating through intergalactic space.
• Exploiting IceCube's large exposure for extremely high energy neutrinos and the lack of observed events above 100 PeV, we can rule out the corresponding models at more than 90% confidence level.