Estimating the impact of the QCD dynamics on the determination of the high energy astrophysical neutrino flux

Abstract

Abstract The number of ultra-high energy neutrinos arriving at IceCube depends on the energy dependence of the astrophysical neutrino flux and neutrino cross-section. In this paper, we investigate the impact of different assumptions for the description of the QCD dynamics at high energies on the determination of the normalization $$\Phi _{Astro}$$ Φ Astro and spectral index $$\gamma $$ γ of the astrophysical neutrino flux. The distribution of neutrino events at the IceCube is estimated considering the DGLAP, BFKL, CGC and BBMT approaches and the best estimates for $$\Phi _{Astro}$$ Φ Astro and $$\gamma $$ γ are determined using a maximum likelihood fit comparing the predictions with the distribution of observed events at IceCube. Moreover, we also investigate if the increase in the effective exposure time expected in IceCube-Gen2 will to allow us to disentangle the QCD dynamical effects from the description of the astrophysical neutrino flux.