Signature of Light Sterile Neutrinos at IceCube

Abstract

The MiniBooNE collaboration has reported evidence for a light sterile neutrino with large mixing angles which is consistent with the results by LSND collaboration approximately 20 years ago. However, any such state would be in conflict with Planck measurement of during Big Bang nucleosynthesis. If there is sufficient self-interaction in the sterile sector, the large effective thermal mass can suppress its production in the early universe. Our objective is to investigate if such interactions could allow for resonant absorption in the astrophysical neutrino spectrum and whether there are observable consequences for IceCube. We show that it is possible to give independent bounds on the parameter space from IceCube observations with the absorption lines corresponding to the neutrino masses.