- Open Access
Searching for sub-eV sterile neutrinos in neutrino telescopes
Phys. Rev. D 113, 075015 – Published 15 April, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/g89r-ljdt
Abstract
With the forthcoming deployment of the IceCube Upgrade, unprecedented statistics of atmospheric neutrinos in the energy range (1–100) GeV will become available, providing a valuable opportunity to probe physics beyond the Standard Model in the neutrino sector. In this study, we calculate the sensitivity of the IceCube Upgrade to sterile neutrinos with mass-squared splittings . We demonstrate that, particularly due to the (1–10) GeV energy window, mixing angles as small as can be probed by the IceCube Upgrade for all mass-squared splittings below . Furthermore, we investigate the potential impact of a sterile neutrino state on the precision determination of standard atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters in the IceCube Upgrade.
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