What measurements of neutrino neutral current events can reveal

Abstract

Abstract:We show that neutral current (NC) measurements at neutrino detectors can play a valuable role in the search for new physics. Such measurements have certain intrinsic features and advantages that can fruitfully be combined with the usual well-studied charged lepton detection channels in order to probe the presence of new interactions or new light states. In addition to the fact that NC events are immune to uncertainties in standard model neutrino mixing and mass parameters, they can have small matter effects and superior rates since all three flavours participate. We also show, as a general feature, that NC measurements provide access to different combinations of CP phases and mixing parameters compared to CC measurements at both long and short baseline experiments. Using the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) as an illustrative setting, we demonstrate the capability of NC measurements to break degeneracies arising in CC measurements, allowing us, in principle, to distinguish between new physics that violates three flavour unitarity and that which does not. Finally, we show that NC measurements can enable us to restrict new physics parameters that are not easily constrained by CC measurements.

Non-Unitarity at DUNE and T2HK with Charged and Neutral Current Measurements

“…For the NC analysis, we take 5% and 10% signal and background normalization errors respectively. All other details regarding the backgrounds and the NC measurements are taken from [35].…”

“…Most of the studies on non unitarity have been done considering the charge current (CC) measurements at the far detector of the long baseline neutrino experiments which generally measures ν µ → ν e and ν µ → ν µ oscillations both in neutrino and anti-neutrino mode [12,[19][20][21][22]24]. Recently, neutral current measurements have been explored at DUNE [33] in the context of one light sterile neutrino [34,35]. Constraints on one light sterile neutrino has already been derived at DUNE and T2HK [36] and can be found in [37][38][39][40].…”

Updated sensitivity of DUNE in 3 + 1 scenario with far and near detectors

“…In this article, we will study the effect of sterile oscillations in DUNE in the presence of both ND and FD. Study of light sterile neutrinos in the context of DUNE has been studied in the past [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. But all these studies has been done using the older configuration of DUNE.…”

Updated sensitivity of DUNE in 3+1 scenario with far and near detectors

“…In this article, we will study the effect of sterile oscillations in DUNE in presence of both ND and FD. Study of light sterile neutrinos in the context of DUNE has been studied in the past [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. But all these studies has been done using the older configuration of DUNE.…”