On the decaying-sterile-neutrino solution to the electron (anti)neutrino appearance anomalies

André de Gouvêa; O. L.G. Peres; Suprabh Prakash; G. V. Stenico

doi:10.1007/JHEP07(2020)141

On the decaying-sterile-neutrino solution to the electron (anti)neutrino appearance anomalies

André de Gouvêa, O. L.G. Peres, Suprabh Prakash^*, G. V. Stenico

^*Corresponding author for this work

Physics and Astronomy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

46 Scopus citations

Abstract

We explore the hypothesis that the unexplained data from Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and MiniBooNE experiments are evidence for a new, heavy neutrino mass-eigenstate that mixes with the muon-type neutrino and decays into an electron-type neutrino and a new, very light scalar particle. We consider two different decay scenarios, one with Majorana neutrinos, one with Dirac neutrinos; both fit the data equally well. We find a reasonable, albeit not excellent, fit to the data of MiniBooNE and LSND. The decaying-sterile-neutrino hypothesis, however, cleanly evades constraints from disappearance searches and precision measurements of leptonic meson decays, as long as 1 MeV ≳ m₄ ≳ 10 keV. The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program (SBN) at Fermilab should be able to definitively test the decaying-sterile-neutrino hypothesis.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	141
Journal	Journal of High Energy Physics
Volume	2020
Issue number	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2020)141
State	Published - Jul 1 2020

Funding

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited

Keywords

Beyond Standard Model
Neutrino Physics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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10.1007/JHEP07(2020)141

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title = "On the decaying-sterile-neutrino solution to the electron (anti)neutrino appearance anomalies",

abstract = "We explore the hypothesis that the unexplained data from Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and MiniBooNE experiments are evidence for a new, heavy neutrino mass-eigenstate that mixes with the muon-type neutrino and decays into an electron-type neutrino and a new, very light scalar particle. We consider two different decay scenarios, one with Majorana neutrinos, one with Dirac neutrinos; both fit the data equally well. We find a reasonable, albeit not excellent, fit to the data of MiniBooNE and LSND. The decaying-sterile-neutrino hypothesis, however, cleanly evades constraints from disappearance searches and precision measurements of leptonic meson decays, as long as 1 MeV ≳ m4 ≳ 10 keV. The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program (SBN) at Fermilab should be able to definitively test the decaying-sterile-neutrino hypothesis.",

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AU - de Gouvêa, André

AU - Peres, O. L.G.

AU - Prakash, Suprabh

AU - Stenico, G. V.

PY - 2020/7/1

Y1 - 2020/7/1

N2 - We explore the hypothesis that the unexplained data from Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and MiniBooNE experiments are evidence for a new, heavy neutrino mass-eigenstate that mixes with the muon-type neutrino and decays into an electron-type neutrino and a new, very light scalar particle. We consider two different decay scenarios, one with Majorana neutrinos, one with Dirac neutrinos; both fit the data equally well. We find a reasonable, albeit not excellent, fit to the data of MiniBooNE and LSND. The decaying-sterile-neutrino hypothesis, however, cleanly evades constraints from disappearance searches and precision measurements of leptonic meson decays, as long as 1 MeV ≳ m4 ≳ 10 keV. The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program (SBN) at Fermilab should be able to definitively test the decaying-sterile-neutrino hypothesis.

AB - We explore the hypothesis that the unexplained data from Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and MiniBooNE experiments are evidence for a new, heavy neutrino mass-eigenstate that mixes with the muon-type neutrino and decays into an electron-type neutrino and a new, very light scalar particle. We consider two different decay scenarios, one with Majorana neutrinos, one with Dirac neutrinos; both fit the data equally well. We find a reasonable, albeit not excellent, fit to the data of MiniBooNE and LSND. The decaying-sterile-neutrino hypothesis, however, cleanly evades constraints from disappearance searches and precision measurements of leptonic meson decays, as long as 1 MeV ≳ m4 ≳ 10 keV. The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program (SBN) at Fermilab should be able to definitively test the decaying-sterile-neutrino hypothesis.

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On the decaying-sterile-neutrino solution to the electron (anti)neutrino appearance anomalies

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