Apparent multiple Delta m^2_32 in muon anti-neutrino and muon neutrino survival oscillations from non-standard interaction matter effect

Abstract

Neutrinos propagating through matter may participate in forward coherent neutral-current-like scattering arising from non-standard interactions as well as from the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein matter potential $V_e$. We show that at fixed long baselines through matter of constant density, the non-standard interaction potential ${\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }{V}_e$ can contribute an additional term to the oscillation phase whose sign differs for $\anumu$ versus $\numu$ propagation in matter. Its presence can cause different apparent $\Delta m^2$ to be erroneously inferred on the basis of oscillations in vacuum, with values lying above (for $\anumu$) or below (for $\numu$) the actual $\Delta m_{32}^2$ for the case where ${\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }$ is predominantly real-valued and of sign opposite to $\Delta m_{32}^2$. An NSI scenario invoking only $\Re ({\epsilon }_{\mu \tau })$ is shown to be capable of accounting for a disparity recently reported between oscillation survival for $\anumu$ and $\numu$ fluxes measured at $735\mathrm{km}$ by the MINOS experiment. Implications for mantle traversal by atmospheric neutrinos are examined. The NSI matter potential with non-maximal mixing could evade conventional atmospheric neutrino analyses which do not distinguish $\numu$ from $\anumu$ on an event-by-event basis.

7 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review D

References in corpus (6)

• Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation by the K2K Experiment
• General bounds on non-standard neutrino interactions
• Atmospheric neutrinos as probes of neutrino-matter interactions
• Interpretation of MINOS data in terms of non-standard neutrino interactions
• MiniBooNE and LSND data: non-standard neutrino interactions in a (3+1) scheme versus (3+2) oscillations
• Non-standard interactions using the OPERA experiment

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• Long-Range Lepton Flavor Interactions and Neutrino Oscillations
• Hint of non-standard dynamics in solar neutrino conversion
• MINOS Anomaly as A Signal of Lorentz Violation
• Mutual consistency of the MINOS and MiniBooNE Antineutrino Results and Possible CPT Violation