No Arabic abstract
We present limits on sterile neutrino mixing using 4,438 live-days of atmospheric neutrino data from the Super-Kamiokande experiment. We search for fast oscillations driven by an eV$^2$-scale mass splitting and for oscillations into sterile neutrinos instead of tau neutrinos at the atmospheric mass splitting. When performing both these searches we assume that the sterile mass splitting is large, allowing $sin^2(Delta m^2 L/4E)$ to be approximated as $0.5$, and we assume that there is no mixing between electron neutrinos and sterile neutrinos ($|U_{e4}|^2 = 0$). No evidence of sterile oscillations is seen and we limit $|U_{mu4}|^2$ to less than 0.041 and $|U_{tau4}|^2$ to less than 0.18 for $Delta m^2 > 0.8$ eV$^2$ at the 90% C.L. in a 3+1 framework. The approximations that can be made with atmospheric neutrinos allow these limits to be easily applied to 3+N models, and we provide our results in a generic format to allow comparisons with other sterile neutrino models.
Recent results from a 282 kiloton-year exposure of the Super-Kamiokande detector to atmospheric neutrinos are presented. The data when fit both by themselves and in conjunction with constraints from the T2K and reactor neutrino experiments show a weak, though insignificant, preference for the normal mass hierarchy at the level of ~1 sigma. Searches for evidence of oscillations into a sterile neutrino have resulted in limits on the parameters governing their mixing, |U_mu4}|^2 <0.041 and |U_tau4|^2 < 0.18 at 90% C.L. A similar search for an indication of Lorentz-invariance violating oscillations has yielded limits three to seven orders of magnitude more stringent than existing measurements. Additionally, analyses searching for an excess of neutrinos in the atmospheric data produced from the annihilation of dark matter particles in the galaxy and sun have placed tight limits on the cross sections governing their annihilation and scattering.
Neutral current (NC) interactions of atmospheric neutrinos on oxygen form one of the major backgrounds in the search for supernova relic neutrinos with water-based Cherenkov detectors. The NC channel is dominated by neutrino quasi-elastic (NCQE) scattering off nucleons inside $^{16}$O nuclei. In this paper we report the first measurement of NCQE cross section using atmospheric neutrinos at Super-Kamiokande (SK). The measurement used 2,778 live days of SK-IV data with a fiducial volume of 22.5 kiloton water. Within the visible energy window of 7.5-29.5 MeV, we observed $117$ events compared to the expected $71.9$ NCQE signal and $53.1$ background events. Weighted by the atmospheric neutrino spectrum from 160 MeV to 10 GeV, the flux averaged NCQE cross section is measured to be $(1.01pm0.17(text{stat.})^{+0.78}_{-0.30}(text{sys.}))times10^{-38}$ cm$^2$.
While neutrino physics enters precision era, several important unknowns remain. Atmospheric neutrinos allow to simultaneously test key oscillation parameters, with Super-Kamiokande experiment playing a central role. We discuss results from atmospheric neutrino oscillation analysis of the full dataset from Super-Kamiokande I-IV phases. Further, we discuss tests of non-standard neutrino interactions with atmospheric neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande.
We report results of a search for oscillations involving a light sterile neutrino over distances of 1.04 and $735,mathrm{km}$ in a $ u_{mu}$-dominated beam with a peak energy of $3,mathrm{GeV}$. The data, from an exposure of $10.56times 10^{20},textrm{protons on target}$, are analyzed using a phenomenological model with one sterile neutrino. We constrain the mixing parameters $theta_{24}$ and $Delta m^{2}_{41}$ and set limits on parameters of the four-dimensional Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix, $|U_{mu 4}|^{2}$ and $|U_{tau 4}|^{2}$, under the assumption that mixing between $ u_{e}$ and $ u_{s}$ is negligible ($|U_{e4}|^{2}=0$). No evidence for $ u_{mu} to u_{s}$ transitions is found and we set a world-leading limit on $theta_{24}$ for values of $Delta m^{2}_{41} lesssim 1,mathrm{eV}^{2}$.
We report in detail on searches for eV-scale sterile neutrinos, in the context of a 3+1 model, using eight years of data from the IceCube neutrino telescope. By analyzing the reconstructed energies and zenith angles of 305,735 atmospheric $ u_mu$ and $bar{ u}_mu$ events we construct confidence intervals in two analysis spaces: $sin^2 (2theta_{24})$ vs. $Delta m^2_{41}$ under the conservative assumption $theta_{34}=0$; and $sin^2(2theta_{24})$ vs. $sin^2 (2theta_{34})$ given sufficiently large $Delta m^2_{41}$ that fast oscillation features are unresolvable. Detailed discussions of the event selection, systematic uncertainties, and fitting procedures are presented. No strong evidence for sterile neutrinos is found, and the best-fit likelihood is consistent with the no sterile neutrino hypothesis with a p-value of 8% in the first analysis space and 19% in the second.