Invisible Neutrino Decay Could Resolve IceCube's Track and Cascade Tension

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory detects high energy astrophysical neutrinos in two event topologies: tracks and cascades. Since the flavor composition of each event topology differs, tracks and cascades can be used to test the neutrino properties and the mechanisms behind the neutrino production in astrophysical sources. Assuming a conventional model for the neutrino production, the IceCube data sets related to the two channels are in >3 sigma tension with each other. Invisible neutrino decay with lifetime tau/m = 10(2) s/eV solves this tension. Noticeably, it leads to an improvement over the standard nondecay scenario of more than 3 sigma while remaining consistent with all other multimessenger observations. In addition, our invisible neutrino decay model predicts a reduction of 59% in the number of observed nu(tau) events which is consistent with the current observational deficit.