Journal article
Tau depolarization at very high energies for neutrino telescopes
Physical review. D, Vol.106(4), 043008
08/08/2022
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.043008
Abstract
The neutrino interaction length scales with energy, and becomes comparable to Earth's diameter above 10's of TeV energies. Over terrestrial distances, the tau's short lifetime leads to an energetic regenerated tau neutrino flux, nu(tau )-> tau -> nu(tau), within the Earth. The next generation of neutrino experiments aim to detect ultrahigh energy neutrinos. Many of them rely on detecting either the regenerated tau neutrino, or a tau decay shower. Both of these signatures can be affected by the polarization of the tau through the energy distribution of the secondary particles produced from the tau's decay. While taus produced in weak interactions are nearly 100% polarized, it is expected that taus experience some depolarization due to electromagnetic interactions in the Earth. In this paper, for the first time we quantify the depolarization of taus in electromagnetic energy loss. We find that tau depolarization has only small effects on the final energy of tau neutrinos or taus produced by high energy tau neutrinos incident on the Earth. Tau depolarization can be directly implemented in Monte Carlo simulations such as nuPyProp and TauRunner.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Tau depolarization at very high energies for neutrino telescopes
- Creators
- Carlos A. Arguelles - Harvard UniversityDiksha Garg - University of IowaSameer Patel - University of IowaMary Hall Reno - University of IowaIbrahim Safa - Harvard University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Physical review. D, Vol.106(4), 043008
- DOI
- 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.043008
- ISSN
- 2470-0010
- eISSN
- 2470-0029
- Publisher
- Amer Physical Soc
- Number of pages
- 12
- Grant note
- Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University PLR-1600823; PHY-1607644 / NSF; National Science Foundation (NSF) Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation DE-SC-0010113 / U.S. Department of Energy; United States Department of Energy (DOE) Alfred P. Sloan Foundation 80NSSC19K0484 / NASA; National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) University of Wisconsin Research Council
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 08/08/2022
- Academic Unit
- Physics and Astronomy
- Record Identifier
- 9984428837402771
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