No Arabic abstract
We use an effective-field-theory approach to construct models with naturally light sterile neutrinos, due to either exact or accidental global symmetries. The most attractive models we find are based on gauge symmetries, either discrete or continuous. We give examples of simple models based on Z_N, U(1), and SU(2).
We present results from global fits to the available reactor antineutrino dataset, as of Fall 2019, to determine the global preference for a fourth, sterile neutrino. We have separately considered experiments that measure the integrated inverse-beta decay (IBD) rate from those that measure the energy spectrum of IBD events at one or more locations. The software used is the newly developed GLoBESfit tool set which is based on the publicly available GLoBES framework and will be released as open-source software.
Neutrinos, being the only fermions in the Standard Model of Particle Physics that do not possess electromagnetic or color charges, have the unique opportunity to communicate with fermions outside the Standard Model through mass mixing. Such Standard Model-singlet fermions are generally referred to as sterile neutrinos. In this review article, we discuss the theoretical and experimental motivation for sterile neutrinos, as well as their phenomenological consequences. With the benefit of hindsight in 2020, we point out potentially viable and interesting ideas. We focus in particular on sterile neutrinos that are light enough to participate in neutrino oscillations, but we also comment on the benefits of introducing heavier sterile states. We discuss the phenomenology of eV-scale sterile neutrinos in terrestrial experiments and in cosmology, we survey the global data, and we highlight various intriguing anomalies. We also expose the severe tension that exists between different data sets and prevents a consistent interpretation of the global data in at least the simplest sterile neutrino models. We discuss non-minimal scenarios that may alleviate some of this tension. We briefly review the status of keV-scale sterile neutrinos as dark matter and the possibility of explaining the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe through leptogenesis driven by yet heavier sterile neutrinos.
Sterile neutrinos are natural extensions to the standard model of particle physics in neutrino mass generation mechanisms. If they are relatively light, less than approximately 10 keV, they can alter cosmology significantly, from the early Universe to the matter and radiation energy density today. Here, we review the cosmological role such light sterile neutrinos can play from the early Universe, including production of keV-scale sterile neutrinos as dark matter candidates, and dynamics of light eV-scale sterile neutrinos during the weakly-coupled active neutrino era. We review proposed signatures of light sterile neutrinos in cosmic microwave background and large scale structure data. We also discuss keV-scale sterile neutrino dark matter decay signatures in X-ray observations, including recent candidate $sim$3.5 keV X-ray line detections consistent with the decay of a $sim$7 keV sterile neutrino dark matter particle.
We study the potential of the CNGS beam in constraining the parameter space of a model with one sterile neutrino separated from three active ones by an $mathcal{O}(eVq)$ mass-squared difference, $Dmq_Sbl$. We perform our analysis using the OPERA detector as a reference (our analysis can be upgraded including a detailed simulation of the ICARUS detector). We point out that the channel with the largest potential to constrain the sterile neutrino parameter space at the CNGS beam is $ u_mu to u_tau$. The reason for that is twofold: first, the active-sterile mixing angle that governs this oscillation is the less constrained by present experiments; second, this is the signal for which both OPERA and ICARUS have been designed, and thus benefits from an extremely low background. In our analysis we also took into account $ u_mu to u_e$ oscillations. We find that the CNGS potential to look for sterile neutrinos is limited with nominal intensity of the beam, but it is significantly enhanced with a factor 2 to 10 increase in the neutrino flux. Data from both channels allow us, in this case, to constrain further the four-neutrino model parameter space. Our results hold for any value of $Dmq_Sbl gtrsim 0.1 eVq$, textit{i.e.} when oscillations driven by this mass-squared difference are averaged. We have also checked that the bound on $theta_{13}$ that can be put at the CNGS is not affected by the possible existence of sterile neutrinos.
Since most of the neutrino parameters are well-measured, we illustrate precisely the prediction of the Standard Model, minimally extended to allow massive neutrinos, for the electron neutrino magnetic moment. We elaborate on the effects of light sterile neutrinos on the effective electron neutrino magnetic moment measured at the reactors. We explicitly show that the kinematical effects of the neutrino masses are negligible even for light sterile neutrinos.