Sensitivity of medium-baseline reactor neutrino mass-hierarchy experiments to nonstandard interactions

Abstract

We explore the impact of nonstandard interactions at source and detector on the interpretation of reactor electron neutrino disappearance experiments with short- and medium-baseline designs. We use the constraints from the recent results from short-baseline experiments and generalize current estimates of medium-baseline event rates to include charged current interactions at source and detector with standard Lorentz structure but with nonstandard flavor structure. We find that the average spectrum of observed events at a baseline of 50 km, in the middle of the currently favored region, provides a probe of new interactions. We show that an improvement in sensitivity to nonstandard interactions is possible if combined with improved precision of input mixing parameters in independent experiments, despite ambiguity in interpretation of medium-baseline data. We show that nonstandard interactions can enhance or suppress the sensitivity of experiments to the mass hierarchy, depending on the phases of the parameters and the CP-violating phase in the standard three-neutrino mixing picture.

15 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, references added, published in PRD

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• Neutrino Mass Ordering from Oscillations and Beyond: 2018 Status and Future Prospects
• Non-standard Neutrino Interactions at DUNE
• A model for large non-standard interactions of neutrinos leading to the LMA-Dark solution
• Shedding light on LMA-Dark solar neutrino solution by medium baseline reactor experiments: JUNO and RENO-50
• Probing light mediators at ultra-low threshold energies with coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering
• The Daya Bay and T2K results on ${\sin }^{2}2{\theta }_{13}$ and Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions
• Consistent QFT description of non-standard neutrino interactions
• Global Analysis of the Source and Detector Nonstandard Interactions Using the Short Baseline Neutrino- and Antineutrino-Electron Scattering Data
• Sensitivities to charged-current nonstandard neutrino interactions at DUNE
• ${\sin }^2(\theta )w$ estimate and bounds on nonstandard interactions at source and detector in the solar neutrino low-energy regime
• Exploring SMEFT Induced Non-Standard Interactions from COHERENT to Neutrino Oscillations
• Neutrino oscillations and Non-Standard Interactions
• Probing new physics scenarios in accelerator and reactor neutrino experiments
• Shifts of neutrino oscillation parameters in reactor antineutrino experiments with non-standard interactions
• CP-Violating and Charged Current Neutrino Non-standard Interactions in CE$\nu$NS
• Tests of Lorentz and CPT Violation in the Medium Baseline Reactor Antineutrino Experiment
• Short Baseline Reactor Antineutrino-Electron Scattering Experiments and Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions at Source and Detector
• Sensitivities of future reactor and long-baseline neutrino experiments to NSI
• Probing muonic charged current nonstandard interactions at decay-at-rest facilities in conjunction with T2HK
• Neutrino Oscillations at JUNO, the Born Rule, and Sorkin's Triple Path Interference
• Determination of mass hierarchy with ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_{\tau }$ appearance and the effect of nonstandard interactions
• Running of Oscillation Parameters in Matter with Flavor-Diagonal Non-Standard Interactions of the Neutrino
• JUNO's prospects for determining the neutrino mass ordering
• Neutrino nonstandard interactions: Confronting COHERENT and LHC data