Light sterile neutrino sensitivity at the nuSTORM facility
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
A facility that can deliver beams of electron and muon neutrinos from the decay of a stored muon beam has the potential to unambiguously resolve the issue of the evidence for light sterile neutrinos that arises in short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments and from estimates of the effective number of neutrino flavors from fits to cosmological data. In this paper, we show that the nuSTORM facility, with stored muons of 3.8 GeV/c ± 10%, will be able to carry out a conclusive muon neutrino appearance search for sterile neutrinos and test the LSND and MiniBooNE experimental signals with 10σ sensitivity, even assuming conservative estimates for the systematic uncertainties. This experiment would add greatly to our knowledge of the contribution of light sterile neutrinos to the number of effective neutrino flavors from the abundance of primordial helium production and from constraints on neutrino energy density from the cosmic microwave background. The appearance search is complemented by a simultaneous muon neutrino disappearance analysis that will facilitate tests of various sterile neutrino models.
Date Issued
2014-04-01
Date Acceptance
2013-04-27
Citation
Physical Review D: Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology, 2014, 89 (7)
ISSN
1550-7998
Publisher
American Physical Society
Journal / Book Title
Physical Review D: Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
Volume
89
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© 2014 The American Physical Society
Sponsor
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Grant Number
ST/L00609X/1 GRIDPP
ST/K003844/1 GRIDPP
ST/F006748/1
ST/G502347/1
ST/K001604/1
ST/I005912/1
ST/J004901/1
ST/I002200/1
ST/J005665/1
ST/I000410/1
ST/L002116/1
ST/H001735/1 MICE/UKNF
ST/J002097/1 MICE/UKNF
PP/E003192/1
ST/L006359/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics, Particles & Fields
Physics
ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
PHYSICS, PARTICLES & FIELDS
DETECTOR
TOOLKIT
GALLEX
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 071301
Date Publish Online
2014-04-09