Searching for Novel Neutrino Interactions at NOvA and Beyond in Light of Large theta_13

Abstract

We examine the prospects of probing nonstandard interactions (NSI) of neutrinos in the e-tau sector with upcoming long-baseline nu_mu -> nu_e oscillation experiments. First conjectured decades ago, neutrino NSI remain of great interest, especially in light of the recent 8B solar neutrino measurements by SNO, Super-Kamiokande, and Borexino. We observe that the recent discovery of large theta_13 implies that long-baseline experiments have considerable NSI sensitivity, thanks to the interference of the standard and new physics conversion amplitudes. In particular, in some parts of NSI parameter space, the upcoming NOvA experiment will be sensitive enough to see ~ 3sigma deviations from the SM-only hypothesis. On the flip side, NSI introduce important ambiguities in interpreting NOvA results as measurements of CP-violation, the mass hierarchy and the octant of theta_23. In particular, observed CP violation could be due to a phase coming from NSI, rather than the vacuum Hamiltonian. The proposed LBNE experiment, with its longer ~ 1300 km baseline, may break many of these interpretative degeneracies.

10 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Observation of electron-antineutrino disappearance at Daya Bay

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Neutrinophilic Non-Standard Interactions
• Degeneracy between ${\theta }_{23}$ octant and neutrino non-standard interactions at DUNE
• Shedding light on LMA-Dark solar neutrino solution by medium baseline reactor experiments: JUNO and RENO-50
• Exploring the effects of Scalar Non Standard Interactions on the CP violation sensitivity at DUNE
• New neutrino physics and the altered shapes of solar neutrino spectra
• Viable models for large non-standard neutrino interactions