Search results for "sterile"
showing 10 items of 164 documents
Status of Light Sterile Neutrino Searches
2020
A number of anomalous results in short-baseline oscillation may hint at the existence of one or more light sterile neutrino states in the eV mass range and have triggered a wave of new experimental efforts to search for a definite signature of oscillations between active and sterile neutrino states. The present paper aims to provide a comprehensive review on the status of light sterile neutrino searches in mid-2019: we discuss not only the basic experimental approaches and sensitivities of reactor, source, atmospheric, and accelerator neutrino oscillation experiments but also the complementary bounds arising from direct neutrino mass experiments and cosmological observations. Moreover, we r…
Dirac neutrinos from flavor symmetry
2013
We present a model where Majorana neutrino mass terms are forbidden by the flavor symmetry group Delta(27). Neutrinos are Dirac fermions and their masses arise in the same way as that of the charged fermions, due to very small Yukawa couplings. The model fits current neutrino oscillation data and correlates the octant of the atmospheric angle with the magnitude of the lightest neutrino mass, with maximal mixing excluded for any neutrino mass
Limits on sterile neutrino contributions to neutrinoless double beta decay
2015
Nuclear matrix elements (NME) for exchange of arbitrary mass neutrinos are calculated in the interacting boson model (IBM-2). By combining the NME with the phase space factors (PSF), expected half-lives for neutrinos of mass ${m}_{N}$ and coupling ${U}_{eN}$ are estimated. Limits on sterile neutrinos with masses in the eV, keV, MeV-GeV, and TeV range are given.
The T2K Experiment
2011
The T2K experiment is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. Its main goal is to measure the last unknown lepton sector mixing angle {\theta}_{13} by observing {\nu}_e appearance in a {\nu}_{\mu} beam. It also aims to make a precision measurement of the known oscillation parameters, {\Delta}m^{2}_{23} and sin^{2} 2{\theta}_{23}, via {\nu}_{\mu} disappearance studies. Other goals of the experiment include various neutrino cross section measurements and sterile neutrino searches. The experiment uses an intense proton beam generated by the J-PARC accelerator in Tokai, Japan, and is composed of a neutrino beamline, a near detector complex (ND280), and a far detector (Super-Kamiokande)…
Constraining the invisible neutrino decay with KM3NeT-ORCA
2019
Several theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model consider that neutrinos can decay. In this work we assume that the standard mechanism of neutrino oscillations is altered by the decay of the heaviest neutrino mass state into a sterile neutrino and, depending on the model, a scalar or a Majoron. We study the sensitivity of the forthcoming KM3NeT-ORCA experiment to this scenario and find that it could improve the current bounds coming from oscillation experiments, where three-neutrino oscillations have been considered, by roughly two orders of magnitude. We also study how the presence of this neutrino decay can affect the determination of the atmospheric oscillation parameters $…
Solar and Atmospheric Four-Neutrino Oscillations
2001
We present an analysis of the neutrino oscillation solutions of the solar and atmospheric neutrino problems in the framework of four-neutrino mixing where a sterile neutrino is added to the three standard ones and the mass spectra presents two separated doublets. Such scenarios allow for simultaneous transitions of solar $\nu_e$, as well as atmospheric $\nu_\mu$, into active and sterile neutrinos controlled by the additional mixing angles $\vartheta_{23}$ and $\vartheta_{24}$, and they contain as limiting cases the pure solar $\nu_e$-active and $\nu_e$-sterile neutrino oscillations, and the pure atmospheric $\nu_\mu\to\nu_s$ and $\nu_\mu\to\nu_\tau$ oscillations, respectively. We evaluate t…
Dark radiation and interacting scenarios
2013
An extra dark radiation component can be present in the universe in the form of sterile neutrinos, axions or other very light degrees of freedom which may interact with the dark matter sector. We derive here the cosmological constraints on the dark radiation abundance, on its effective velocity and on its viscosity parameter from current data in dark radiation-dark matter coupled models. The cosmological bounds on the number of extra dark radiation species do not change significantly when considering interacting schemes. We also find that the constraints on the dark radiation effective velocity are degraded by an order of magnitude while the errors on the viscosity parameter are a factor of…
Sterile neutrinos or flux uncertainties? — Status of the reactor anti-neutrino anomaly
2017
The $\sim 3\sigma$ discrepancy between the predicted and observed reactor anti-neutrino flux, known as the reactor anti-neutrino anomaly, continues to intrigue. The recent discovery of an unexpected bump in the reactor anti-neutrino spectrum, as well as indications that the flux deficit is different for different fission isotopes seems to disfavour the explanation of the anomaly in terms of sterile neutrino oscillations. We critically review this conclusion in view of all available data on electron (anti)neutrino disappearance. We find that the sterile neutrino hypothesis cannot be rejected based on global data and is only mildly disfavored compared to an individual rescaling of neutrino fl…
If sterile neutrinos exist, how can one determine the total solar neutrino fluxes?
2002
The 8B solar neutrino flux inferred from a global analysis of solar neutrino experiments is within 11% (1 sigma) of the predicted standard solar model value if only active neutrinos exist, but could be as large as 1.7 times the standard prediction if sterile neutrinos exist. We show that the total 8B neutrino flux (active plus sterile neutrinos) can be determined experimentally to about 10% (1 sigma) by combining charged current measurements made with the KamLAND reactor experiment and with the SNO CC solar neutrino experiment, provided the LMA neutrino oscillation solution is correct and the simulated performance of KamLAND is valid. Including also SNO NC data, the sterile component of the…
Four-neutrino oscillation solutions of the solar neutrino problem
2000
We present an analysis of the neutrino oscillation solutions of the solar neutrino problem in the framework of four-neutrino mixing where a sterile neutrino is added to the three standard ones. We perform a fit to the full data set corresponding to the 825-day Super-Kamiokande data sample as well as to Chlorine, GALLEX and SAGE and Kamiokande experiments. In our analysis we use all measured total event rates as well as all Super-Kamiokande data on the zenith angle dependence and the recoil electron energy spectrum. We consider both transitions via the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) mechanism as well as oscillations in vacuum (just-so) and find the allowed solutions for different values …