No Arabic abstract
An extension of the New Standard Model, by introducing a mixing of the low mass ``active neutrinos with heavy ones, or by any model with lepton flavor violation, is considered. This leads to non-orthogonal neutrino production and detection states and to modifications of neutrino oscillations in both, vacuum and matter. The possibility of the discovery of such effects in current and future neutrino oscillation experiments is discussed. First order approximation formulas for the flavor transition probabilities in constant density matter, for all experimentally available channels, are given. Numerical calculations of flavor transition probabilities for two sets of New Physics parameters describing a single ``effective heavy neutrino state, both satisfying present experimental constraints, have been performed. Two energy ranges and several baselines, assuming both the current ($pm2sigma$) and the expected in future ($pm3%$) errors of the neutrino oscillation parameters are considered, keeping their present central values. It appears that the biggest potential of the discovery of the possible presence of any New Physics is pronounced in oscillation channels in which $ u_{e}$, $ u_{bar{e}}$ are not involved at all, especially for two baselines, $L=3000 km$ and $L=7500 km$, which for other reasons are also called ``magic for future $Neutrino Factory$ experiments.
In response to the growing interest in building a Neutrino Factory to produce high intensity beams of electron- and muon-neutrinos and antineutrinos, in October 1999 the Fermilab Directorate initiated two six-month studies. The first study, organized by N. Holtkamp and D. Finley, was to investigate the technical feasibility of an intense neutrino source based on a muon storage ring. This design study has produced a report in which the basic conclusion is that a Neutrino Factory is technically feasible, although it requires an aggressive R&D program. The second study, which is the subject of this report, was to explore the physics potential of a Neutrino Factory as a function of the muon beam energy and intensity, and for oscillation physics, the potential as a function of baseline.
The various global analyses of available neutrino oscillation data indicate the presence of the standard $3+0$ neutrino oscillation picture. However, there are a few short baseline anomalies that point to the possible existence of a fourth neutrino (with mass in the eV-scale), essentially sterile in nature. Should sterile neutrino exist in nature and its presence is not taken into consideration properly in the analyses of neutrino data, the interference terms arising due to the additional CP phases in presence of a sterile neutrino can severely impact the physics searches in long baseline (LBL) neutrino oscillation experiments. In the current work we consider one light (eV-scale) sterile neutrino and probe all the three CP phases ($delta_{13}$, $delta_{24}$, $delta_{34}$) in the context of the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) and also estimate how the results improve when data from NOvA, T2K and T2HK are added in the analysis. We illustrate the $Delta chi^2$ correlations of the CP phases among each other, and also with the three active-sterile mixing angles. Finally, we briefly illustrate how the relevant parameter spaces in the context of neutrinoless double beta decay get modified in light of the bounds in presence of a light sterile neutrino.
The sensitivity to dark matter signals at neutrino experiments is fundamentally challenged by the neutrino rates, as they leave similar signatures in their detectors. As a way to improve the signal sensitivity, we investigate a dark matter search strategy which utilizes the timing and energy spectra to discriminate dark matter from neutrino signals at low-energy, pulsed-beam neutrino experiments. This strategy was proposed in our companion paper arXiv:1906.10745, which we apply to potential searches at COHERENT, JSNS$^2$, and CCM. These experiments are not only sources of neutrinos but also high intensity sources of photons. The dark matter candidate of interest comes from the relatively prompt decay of a dark sector gauge boson which may replace a Standard-Model photon, so the delayed neutrino events can be suppressed by keeping prompt events only. Furthermore, prompt neutrino events can be rejected by a cut in recoil energy spectra, as their incoming energy is relatively small and bounded from above while dark matter may deposit a sizable energy beyond it. We apply the search strategy of imposing a combination of energy and timing cuts to the existing CsI data of the COHERENT experiment as a concrete example, and report a mild excess beyond known backgrounds. We then investigate the expected sensitivity reaches to dark matter signals in our benchmark experiments.
New Physics can show up in various well-known processes already studied in the Standard Model, in particular by modifying decay rates to some extent. In this work, I examine leptonic decays of $Upsilon$ vector resonances of bottomonium below $Bbar{B}$ production, subsequent to a magnetic dipole radiative structural transition of the vector resonance yielding a pseudoscalar continuum state, searching for the existence of a light Higgs-like neutral boson that would imply a slight but experimentally measurable breaking of lepton universality.
We explore the sensitivity to new physics of the recently proposed vIOLETA experiment: a 10 kg Skipper Charged Coupled Device detector deployed 12 meters away from a commercial nuclear reactor core. We investigate two broad classes of models which benefit from the very low energy recoil threshold of these detectors, namely neutrino magnetic moments and light mediators coupled to neutrinos and quarks or electrons. We find that this experimental setup is very sensitive to light, weakly coupled new physics, and in particular that it could probe potential explanations of the event excess observed in XENON1T. We also provide a detailed study on the dependence of the sensitivity on the experimental setup assumptions and on the neutrino flux systematic uncertainties.