English

Astrophysical bounds on the high-energy evolution of neutrino mixing

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-04-17 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena High Energy Physics - Experiment High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

While conventional oscillation experiments measure neutrino mixing parameters with high precision, these measurements are strictly confined to sub-TeV scales. At higher energies, renormalization-group effects can cause these parameters to evolve with the transferred momentum, QQ. High-energy and ultra-high-energy astrophysical neutrinos, spanning TeV to EeV energies, probe high values of QQ unreachable by conventional experiments, offering an unprecedented test of high-energy mixing. We use the flavor composition of these neutrinos -- the relative proportions of νe\nu_e, νμ\nu_\mu, and ντ\nu_\tau -- to constrain this evolution, both phenomenologically and within dimension-6 Standard Model Effective Field Theory. We account for astrophysical uncertainties -- an unavoidable requirement to obtain realistic results, even though this weakens the bounds. Although present IceCube measurements lack the sensitivity to detect this running, we forecast that upcoming multi-detector combinations will place unprecedented bounds on the high-energy evolution of neutrino mixing.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.14409,
  title  = {Astrophysical bounds on the high-energy evolution of neutrino mixing},
  author = {Mauricio Bustamante and Qinrui Liu and Gabriela Barenboim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.14409},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

40 pages, 14 figures, 4 tables, plus appendices