Sterile neutrino oscillations after first MiniBooNE results

Abstract

In view of the recent results from the MiniBooNE experiment we revisit the global neutrino oscillation fit to short-baseline neutrino data by adding one or two sterile neutrinos with eV-scale masses to the three Standard Model neutrinos, and for the first time we consider also the global fit with three sterile neutrinos. Four-neutrino oscillations of the (3+1) type have been only marginally allowed before the recent MiniBooNE results, and become even more disfavored with the new data (at the level of $4\sigma$). In the framework of so-called (3+2) five-neutrino mass schemes we find severe tension between appearance and disappearance experiments at the level of more than $3\sigma$, and hence no satistfactory fit to the global data is possible in (3+2) schemes. This tension remains also when a third sterile neutrino is added, and the quality of the global fit does not improve significantly in a (3+3) scheme. It should be noted, however, that in models with more than one sterile neutrino the MiniBooNE results are in perfect agreement with the LSND appearance evidence, thanks to the possibility of CP violation available in such oscillation schemes. Furthermore, if disappearance data are not taken into account (3+2) oscillations provide an excellent fit to the full MiniBooNE spectrum including the event excess at low energies.

30 pages, 12 figures, minor improvements of text and abstract, summary table added, matches version to be published in Phys. Rev. D

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• Phenomenology with Massive Neutrinos
• Solar neutrino measurements in Super-Kamiokande-II
• NOvA Proposal to Build a 30 Kiloton Off-Axis Detector to Study Neutrino Oscillations in the Fermilab NuMI Beamline
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• Inverted Mass Hierarchy from Scaling in the Neutrino Mass Matrix: Low and High Energy Phenomenology
• Quantum-Gravity Decoherence Effects in Neutrino Oscillations: Expected Constraints from CNGS and J-PARC
• Signatures of heavy sterile neutrinos at long baseline experiments
• Neutrino oscillations: present status and outlook
• Confusing Sterile Neutrinos with Deviation from Tribimaximal Mixing at Neutrino Telescopes
• Is Gravitational Lensing by Intercluster Filaments Always Negligible?
• The (3+2) Neutrino Mass Spectrum and Double Chooz
• Sterile neutrino signals from supernovae
• The effect of primordial fluctuations on neutrino oscillations