Track signals at IceCube from subleading channels

Tracks events at the IceCube Observatory are characterized by an energetic muon crossing several kilometers before decaying. Such muons are dominantly produced in charged current (CC) muon neutrino-hadron interactions. However, muons are also produced through <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mrow><a:mi>W</a:mi></a:mrow></a:math>-boson production and in the decay of tau leptons and heavy mesons created in neutral and charged current interactions induced by all neutrino flavors. In this paper, we investigate the contribution of these subleading channels to events characterized as tracks at the IceCube. Our results indicate that these channels correspond to a non-negligible fraction of the high-energy starting events track events. In addition, we show that its contributions are concentrated in muons that are less energetic than those arising from muonic neutrino CC interactions for the same visible energies of the process. Finally, we investigate the impact of these additional channels on the description of the astrophysical neutrino flux, and we find that the inclusion of these subleading processes are important in determining the parameters of the astrophysical neutrino flux. Published by the American Physical Society 2024