DUNE Sensitivities to the mixing between Sterile and Tau Neutrinos

Abstract

Most of neutrino events observed from neutrinos produced in the Sun, from interactions in the Earth atmosphere, and neutrinos from artificial sources such as the ones produced in reactor and accelerator-based experiments are well described by neutrino oscillations within the three active neutrino framework. However, the existence of extra light sterile neutrino states, mainly motivated by different anomalies (like LSND and reactor), has not been yet established. In order to reject the light sterile hypothesis (or to discover a new oscillation phase around the eV scale), an enormous effort is being pursued by current and future experimental collaborations. In this talk (based on the work [1]) I will focus on the role of the long-baseline (LBL) neutrino experiments, in particular DUNE, to constrain the tau-sterile mixing angle in the economical framework of having only one extra light sterile neutrino state. As it will be discussed, at LBL experiments the neutral-current data is directly sensitive to the presence of light sterile neutrinos.