Explaining the MiniBooNE excess by a decaying sterile neutrino with mass in the 250 MeV range

Fischer, Oliver; Hernández-Cabezudo, Álvaro; Schwetz, Thomas

doi:10.1103/physrevd.101.075045

Cited by 86 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…We also note that an excess of electron-like events with additional tracks was later reported and attributed to neutrino interactions inside the detector [106][107][108] (see also the discussion in Ref. [109]).…”

Section: Miniboone Low-energy Excessmentioning

confidence: 57%

Dark neutrinos and a three-portal connection to the standard model

2020

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We introduce a dark neutrino sector which respects a hidden Uð1Þ 0 gauge symmetry, subsequently broken by the vacuum expectation value of a dark scalar. The model is a self-consistent realization of an extended hidden sector that communicates with the standard model only via the three renormalizable portals, namely, neutrino, vector and scalar mixing. The interplay between portal couplings leads to several novel signatures in heavy neutrino, dark photon, and dark scalar searches, typically characterized by multileptons plus missing energy and displaced vertices. A striking signature arises in kaon factories such as NA62, where K þ → l þ α νl þ β l − β decays could reveal a heavy neutrino and a light dark photon resonance above backgrounds. Given the open parameter space, we also comment on recent ideas to explain outstanding experimental anomalies, and how they would fit into our proposed model. A minimal extension of the model, possibly motivated by anomaly cancellation, can accommodate a dark matter candidate strongly connected to the neutrino sector.

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Section: Miniboone Low-energy Excessmentioning

confidence: 57%

Dark neutrinos and a three-portal connection to the standard model

2020

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“…Our model, however, is also consistent with all constraints. Notably, it reproduces the angular distribution of the neutrino interaction products in MiniBooNE because it predicts an actual flux of electron neutrinos instead of attempting to mimic the signal with other particles [30][31][32][33][34][35]. In particular, the angle between the parent ν s and the daughter ν e is suppressed by a large Lorentz boost γ ∼ Oð1000Þ [36].…”

Section: Fit To Miniboone Datamentioning

confidence: 98%

Decaying sterile neutrinos and the short baseline oscillation anomalies

et al. 2020

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The MiniBooNE experiment has observed a significant excess of electron neutrinos in a muon neutrino beam, in conflict with standard neutrino oscillations. We discuss the possibility that this excess is explained by a sterile neutrino with a mass ∼1 keV that decays quickly back into active neutrinos plus a new light boson. This scenario satisfies terrestrial and cosmological constraints because it has neutrino selfinteractions built-in. Accommodating also the LSND, reactor, and gallium anomalies is possible, but requires an extension of the model to avoid cosmological limits.

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“…It has motivated a worldwide program to search for new particle states with mass-squared differences between 0.1 and 10 eV 2 [6]. Notable other explanations include, for example, phenomenology that modifies the vacuum oscillation probability relevant to short-baseline neutrino experiments , modifications of neutrino propagation in matter [31][32][33][34][35], or production of new particles in the beam or in the detector and its surroundings [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The 3 þ 1 model is widely used as a benchmark for experimental datasets to examine whether they show evidence for a sterile neutrino. Extensions to this model have been proposed such as adding more neutrino mass states [53], allowing the heavier mass states to decay [27,48,49,54], or introducing secret neutrino interactions [32,[35][36][37]40,[44][45][46][47][55][56][57][58]; these more complex models are not considered further in this work.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube Neutrino Telescope

Aartsen¹,

Abbasi²,

Ackermann³

et al. 2020

Phys. Rev. D

103

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We report in detail on searches for eV-scale sterile neutrinos, in the context of a 3 þ 1 model, using eight years of data from the IceCube Neutrino Telescope. By analyzing the reconstructed energies and zenith angles of 305,735 atmospheric ν μ andν μ events we construct confidence intervals in two analysis spaces: sin 2 ð2θ 24 Þ vs Δm 2 41 under the conservative assumption θ 34 ¼ 0; and sin 2 ð2θ 24 Þ vs sin 2 ð2θ 34 Þ given sufficiently large Δm 2 41 that fast oscillation features are unresolvable. Detailed discussions of the event selection, systematic uncertainties, and fitting procedures are presented. No strong evidence for sterile neutrinos is found, and the best-fit likelihood is consistent with the no sterile neutrino hypothesis with a p value of 8% in the first analysis space and 19% in the second.

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Explaining the MiniBooNE excess by a decaying sterile neutrino with mass in the 250 MeV range

Cited by 86 publications

References 50 publications

Dark neutrinos and a three-portal connection to the standard model

Dark neutrinos and a three-portal connection to the standard model

Decaying sterile neutrinos and the short baseline oscillation anomalies

Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube Neutrino Telescope

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