New limits on radiative sterile neutrino decays from a search for single photons in neutrino interactions

Abstract

It has been recently shown that excess events observed by the LSND and MiniBooNE neutrino experiments could be interpreted as a signal from the radiative decay of a heavy sterile neutrino ν_h produced in ν_μneutral current-like interactions. If the ν_h exist, it would be also produced by the ν_μbeam from the CERN SPS in the neutrino beam line shielding. The ν_h's would penetrate the shielding and be observed through the decay ν_h -> νγ, followed by the photon conversion into e+e- pair in the active target of the NOMAD detector. The ν_h's could be also produced in the iron of the magnetic spectrometer of the CHORUS detector, located just in front of NOMAD. Considering these two sources of ν_h's we set new constraints on ν_h properties and exclude part of the LSND/MiniBooNE ν_h parameter space using bounds on single photons production in neutrino reactions recently reported by the NOMAD collaboration. We find that broad bands in the parameter space are still open for more sensitive searches for the ν_h in future neutrino experiments.

arXiv comment10 pages, 5 figures. Revised version to appear in PLB. Discussion of dominant NC-like production of ν_h's added

References in corpus (16)

• Evidence for Neutrino Oscillations from the Observation of Electron Anti-neutrinos in a Muon Anti-Neutrino Beam
• Event Excess in the MiniBooNE Search for ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }\to {\bar{\nu }}_e$ Oscillations
• Unexplained Excess of Electron-Like Events From a 1-GeV Neutrino Beam
• Upper limits for neutrino oscillations muon-antineutrino to electron-antineutrino from muon decay at rest
• Search for Neutral Heavy Leptons in a High-Energy Neutrino Beam
• Search for heavy neutrinos mixing with tau neutrinos
• The MiniBooNE anomaly and heavy neutrino decay
• Resolution of puzzles from the LSND, KARMEN, and MiniBooNE experiments
• Prediction of Neutrino Fluxes in the NOMAD Experiment
• Limits on the magnetic moment of sterile neutrino and two-photon neutrino decay
• Muon Capture Constraints on Sterile Neutrino Properties
• A Search for Single Photon Events in Neutrino Interactions
• The MiniBooNE anomaly, the decay Ds -> mu+nu and heavy sterile neutrino
• On Sterile neutrino explanation of LSND and MiniBooNE anomalies
• Search for Heavy Neutrino in K->mu nu_h(nu_h-> nu gamma) Decay at ISTRA+ Setup
• The LSND/MiniBooNe excess events and heavy neutrino from muon and kaon decays

Cited by in corpus (24)

• Dipole portal to heavy neutral leptons
• Status of Light Sterile Neutrino Searches
• Demonstration of MeV-Scale Physics in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers Using ArgoNeuT
• Testing New Physics Explanations of MiniBooNE Anomaly at Neutrino Scattering Experiments
• Event Generators for High-Energy Physics Experiments
• Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube neutrino telescope
• Heavy neutrino decays at MiniBooNE
• Direct Detection Experiments at the Neutrino Dipole Portal Frontier
• Neutrino Up-scattering via the Dipole Portal at Forward LHC Detectors
• Explaining the MiniBooNE Excess Through a Mixed Model of Oscillation and Decay
• An Active-to-Sterile Neutrino Transition Dipole Moment and the XENON1T Excess
• Icecube/DeepCore tests for novel explanations of the MiniBooNE anomaly
• Constraints on electromagnetic properties of sterile neutrinos from MiniBooNE results
• Dipole-Coupled Neutrissimo Explanations of the MiniBooNE Excess Including Constraints from MINERvA Data
• Production of heavy sterile neutrinos from vector boson decay at electroweak temperatures
• A novel event generator for the automated simulation of neutrino scattering
• Space-time evolution of heavy sterile neutrinos in cascade decays
• Impact of non-standard interactions on neutrino-nucleon scattering
• $B-L$ model with $A_4\times Z_3\times Z_4$ symmetry for $3+1$ active$-$sterile neutrino mixing
• Efficiently Exploring Multi-Dimensional Parameter Spaces Beyond the Standard Model
• A 17 MeV pseudoscalar and the LSND, MiniBooNE and ATOMKI anomalies
• The case for mixed dark matter from sterile neutrinos
• Dirt/Detector/Dump: Complementary BSM production at Short-Baseline Neutrino Facilities
• Enhanced active-sterile neutrino polarizability at the intensity frontier