Extracting the Energy-Dependent Neutrino-Nucleon Cross Section Above 10 TeV Using IceCube Showers

Understand

Neutrinos are key to probing the deep structure of matter and the high-energy Universe.

• Yet, until recently, their interactions had only been measured at laboratory energies up to about 350 GeV.
• An opportunity to measure their interactions at higher energies opened up with the detection of high-energy neutrinos in IceCube, partially of astrophysical origin.
• Scattering off matter inside the Earth affects the distribution of their arrival directions --- from this, we extract the neutrino-nucleon cross section at energies from 18 TeV to 2 PeV, in four energy bins, in spite of uncertainties in the neutrino flux.