Measuring active-to-sterile neutrino oscillations with neutral current coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering

Abstract

Light sterile neutrinos have been introduced as an explanation for a number of oscillation signals at ∆m 2 ∼ 1 eV 2 . Neutrino oscillations at relatively short baselines provide a probe of these possible new states. This paper describes an accelerator-based experiment using neutral current coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering to strictly search for active-to-sterile neutrino oscillations. This experiment could, thus, definitively establish the existence of sterile neutrinos and provide constraints on their mixing parameters. A cyclotron-based proton beam can be directed to multiple targets, producing a low energy pion and muon decay-at-rest neutrino source with variable distance to a single detector. Two types of detectors are considered: a germanium-based detector inspired by the SuperCDMS design and a liquid argon detector inspired by the proposed CLEAR experiment.

Sterile Neutrino Searches in MiniBooNE and MicroBooNE

“…Ricochet also detects NC interactions, and would detect (and discover) coherent neutrino scattering, which has never before been seen [160]. This is an attractive prospect, as the coherent neutrino scattering cross-sections are expected to be much higher than scattering off of individual nucleons.…”

“…The resulting nuclear recoil is then detected. The signature for such an interaction is very similar to that of the nuclear recoil initiated by a WIMP [160]. Detection would be accomplished using low-temperature bolometers and a design very similar to the CDMS dark matter detector [161].…”

Unified approach to electron and neutrino elastic scattering off nuclei with an application to the study of the axial structure

“…Significant deviations of future neutrino data from the results predicted using Eq. (9) would impact our knowledge of specific properties of neutrinos (not shared by the charged leptons) such as different WNC couplings (in the combination α ν ), magnetic moments or the existence of sterile species [21] . Elastic neutrino scattering has also been proposed to probe the neutron density distribution [22][23][24] as a complement to the use of PV electron scattering, and it has important implications on stellar core collapse processes, on the detection of supernova neutrinos [19,25], and for background estimations in dark matter detection experiments [26,27].…”

Research in High Energy Physics at Duke University

“…• Super-K atmospheric ν oscillations, including three-flavor, CPT violation and τ appearance analyses • Beam neutrino oscillation analyses, including first indications of non-zero θ 13 • Supernova neutrino physics studies for LBNE (physics working group convener)…”