Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube neutrino telescope

We report in detail on searches for eV-scale sterile neutrinos, in the context of a 3+1 model, using eight years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Telescope. By analyzing the reconstructed energies and zenith angles of 305,735 atmospheric 𝜈𝜇 and
𝜈𝜇bar events we construct confidence intervals in two analysis spaces: sin2⁡(2⁢𝜃24) vs Δ⁢𝑚2 41 under the conservative assumption 𝜃34 =0; and sin2⁡(2⁢𝜃24) vs sin2⁡(2⁢𝜃34) given sufficiently large Δ⁢𝑚2 41 that fast oscillation features are unresolvable. Detailed discussions of the event selection, systematic uncertainties, and fitting procedures are presented. No strong evidence for sterile neutrinos is found, and the best-fit likelihood is consistent with the no sterile neutrino hypothesis with a 𝑝 value of 8% in the first analysis space and 19% in the second.