Search for Astrophysical Tau Neutrinos in Three Years of IceCube Data

Understand

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has observed a diffuse flux of TeV-PeV astrophysical neutrinos at 5.7{\sigma} significance from an all-flavor search.

• The direct detection of tau neutrinos in this flux has yet to occur.
• Tau neutrinos become distinguishable from other flavors in IceCube at energies above a few hundred TeV, when the cascade from the tau neutrino charged current interaction becomes resolvable from the cascade from the tau lepton decay.
• This paper presents results from a dedicated search for tau neutrinos with energies between 214 TeV and 72 PeV.