Speaker
Description
Previous neutrino experiments have observed a significant excess or deficit in electron neutrinos suggesting a deviation from three flavor oscillations. One of these experiments is MiniBooNE which was based at Fermilab and saw an excess of electron-neutrino-like events from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB). Other anomalies include the gallium and reactor anomalies which saw a disappearance of expected electron-neutrino events. These anomalies can potentially be explained by a fourth sterile neutrino state that does not interact via weak forces but can still oscillate. MicroBooNE is a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) designed to study the MiniBooNE excess and receives neutrinos from the BNB as well as Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) beam. Recent results from MicroBooNE and KATRIN disfavor the single sterile neutrino (3+1) hypothesis as a consistent explanation of these outstanding anomalies. However, expanded models with two sterile neutrinos (3+2) are under-explored. In a 3+2 model, more complicated oscillations arise from the interference of the two sterile neutrinos and the addition of multiple CP violating phases. Using PROfit, a new oscillation analysis tool for the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program, we can analyze MicroBooNE’s sensitivity to the 3+2 model and perform a fit on MicroBooNE’s two beamline datasets to set MicroBooNE’s first limits on the 3+2 model.