Decay of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos

John F. Beacom, Nicole F. Bell, Dan Hooper, Sandip Pakvasa, Thomas J. Weiler
2003 Physical Review Letters  
Existing limits on the non-radiative decay of one neutrino to another plus a massless particle (e.g., a singlet Majoron) are very weak. The best limits on the lifetime to mass ratio come from solar neutrino observations, and are τ/m 10^-4 s/eV for the relevant mass eigenstate(s). For lifetimes even several orders of magnitude longer, high-energy neutrinos from distant astrophysical sources would decay. This would strongly alter the flavor ratios from the ϕ_ν_e:ϕ_ν_μ:ϕ_ν_τ = 1:1:1 expected from
more » ... scillations alone, and should be readily visible in the near future in detectors such as IceCube.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.90.181301 pmid:12785996 fatcat:m2m6t2bc5ffdzmmamssp2dvp4y