- Aug. 2, 2019, 2:00 pm US/Central
- Curia II
- Mauricio Bustamante, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Gordan Krnjaic
Abstract: There is vast potential in high-energy cosmic neutrinos to test particle physics. The cosmic neutrinos
recently discovered by IceCube have the highest detected neutrino energies – up to a few PeV – and
travel the longest distances – up to a few Gpc, the size of the observable Universe. These features make
them attractive probes of particle-physics properties, possibly tiny in size, at energy scales unreachable
by other means. The decades before the IceCube discovery saw many proposals of particle-physics
studies in this direction. Today, these proposals have become a reality, as we are finally turning them
into data-driven tests, in spite of astrophysical unknowns. I will showcase examples of testing neutrino
physics at these scales, including stringent tests of physics beyond the Standard Model. For the coming
decade, prospects are encouraging, thanks to upcoming experiments to detect neutrinos with energies a
thousand times higher.