eV-Scale Sterile Neutrino Search Using Eight Years of Atmospheric Muon Neutrino Data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

The results of a (3+1) sterile neutrino search using eight years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory are presented. A total of 305 735 muon neutrino events are analyzed in reconstructed energy-zenith space to test for signatures of a matter-enhanced oscillation that would occur given a sterile neutrino state with a mass-squared differences between 0.01 and (100\text{}\text{}{\mathrm{eV}}^{2}). The best-fit point is found to be at ({\mathrm{sin}}^{2}\left(2{\theta }{24}\right)=0.10) and (\Delta {m}{41}^{2}=4.5\text{}\text{}{\mathrm{eV}}^{2}), which is consistent with the no sterile neutrino hypothesis with a (p) value of 8.0%.