19–21 May 2025
University of Pittsburgh
US/Eastern timezone

Towards a Robust Exclusion of the Sterile-Neutrino Explanation of Short-Baseline Anomalies

19 May 2025, 16:45
15m
David Lawrence Hall 121, University of Pittsburgh

David Lawrence Hall 121, University of Pittsburgh

Neutrino Physics Neutrino

Speaker

Tao Zhou (Texas A&M University)

Description

The sterile neutrino interpretation of the LSND and MiniBooNE neutrino anomalies is currently being tested at three Liquid Argon detectors: MicroBooNE, SBND, and ICARUS. It has been argued that a degeneracy between $\nu_\mu \to \nu_e$ and $\nu_e \to \nu_e$ oscillations significantly degrades their sensitivity to sterile neutrinos.
Through an independent study, we show two methods to eliminate this concern. First, we resolve this degeneracy by including external constraints on $\nu_e$ disappearance from the PROSPECT reactor experiment. Second, by properly analyzing the full three-dimensional parameter space, we demonstrate that the stronger-than-sensitivity exclusion from MicroBooNE alone already covers the entire 2$\sigma$ preferred regions of MiniBooNE at the level of $2-3\sigma$. We show that upcoming searches at SBND and ICARUS can improve on this beyond the $4\sigma$ level, thereby providing a rigorous test of short-baseline anomalies.

Authors

Bryce Littlejohn IBRAHIM SAFA (University of Wisconsin - Madison) Kevin Kelly (Texas A&M University) Matheus Hostert Ohana Benevides Pedro Machado (Fermilab) Tao Zhou (Texas A&M University)

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