Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube neutrino telescope

We report in detail on searches for eV-scale sterile neutrinos, in the context of a 3+1 model, using eight years of data from the IceCube neutrino telescope. By analyzing the reconstructed energies and zenith angles of 305,735 atmospheric \nu_\muνμ​ and \bar{\nu}_\muνˉμ​ events we construct confidence intervals in two analysis spaces: \sin^2 (2\theta_{24})sin2(2θ24​) vs. \Delta m^2_{41}Δm412​ under the conservative assumption \theta_{34}=0θ34​=0; and \sin^2(2\theta_{24})sin2(2θ24​) vs. \sin^2 (2\theta_{34})sin2(2θ34​) given sufficiently large \Delta m^2_{41}Δm412​ that fast oscillation features are unresolvable. Detailed discussions of the event selection, systematic uncertainties, and fitting procedures are presented. No strong evidence for sterile neutrinos is found, and the best-fit likelihood is consistent with the no sterile neutrino hypothesis with a p-value of 8\% in the first analysis space and 19\% in the second.

Note: This long-form paper is a companion to the letter "An eV-scale sterile neutrino search using eight years of atmospheric muon neutrino data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory". v2: update other experiments contours on results plot