title: Theoretically Palatable Flavor Combinations of Astrophysical Neutrinos.
abstract: The flavor composition of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos can reveal the physics governing their production, propagation, and interaction. The IceCube Collaboration has published the first experimental determination of the ratio of the flux in each flavor to the total. We present, as a theoretical counterpart, new results for the allowed ranges of flavor ratios at Earth for arbitrary flavor ratios in the sources. Our results will allow IceCube to more quickly identify when their data imply standard physics, a general class of new physics with arbitrary (incoherent) combinations of mass eigenstates, or new physics that goes beyond that, e.g., with terms that dominate the Hamiltonian at high energy.
authors.affiliation: Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP), Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.|Department of Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.
authors.forename: Mauricio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bustamante
authors.affiliation: Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP), Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.|Department of Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.|Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.
authors.forename: John F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Beacom
authors.affiliation: DESY, Platanenallee 6, D-15738 Zeuthen, Germany.
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Winter