1110.4871 (Joseph Bramante)

Sterile Neutrino Production Through a Matter Effect Enhancement at Long
Baselines    [PDF]

Joseph Bramante

Motivated by constraints on sterile neutrino models of the OPERA anomaly, we re-examine bounds on sterile neutrino production at long baselines from the MINOS result $P_{\nu_{\mu} \rightarrow \nu_s} < 0.22$ (90% CL). We demonstrate that sterile neutrinos with a neutral U(1) vector coupling to fermionic matter could evade the MINOS limit, allowing a higher fraction of active to sterile neutrino conversion at long baselines. Scanning the parameter space of sterile neutrino matter effect fits of the LSND and MiniBooNe data, we show that in the case of a vector singlet coupling of sterile neutrinos to matter, some favored parameterizations of these fits would create neutral-current event excesses above standard model predictions at long baseline experiments (e.g. MINOS and OPERA).

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.4871