Flavor Oscillations of High-Energy Neutrinos

Abstract

In this thesis, we study neutrino oscillations in vacuum and in the presence of a Dark Matter halo in the Milky Way. For that purpose, first describe the particle physics of neutrinos through an historical introduction. Then we focus on the Quantum Field Theory describing neutrinos in the Standard Model, weak interactions and electroweak unfication. We also discuss the methods and techniques of neutrino astronomy before finally making use of the data collected by IceCube and our numerical simulations to analyse high-energy neutrino oscillations. We conclude that relevant information about the cosmic sources could be extracted from the track-to-shower ratio of events when more precise statistics can be derived after more years of observation. We also consider the effects of Dark Matter on the oscillation probabilities and find that the mixing angle and the neutrino energy are the most relevant parameters.