Constraints on very light sterile neutrinos from ${\theta }_{13}$-sensitive reactor experiments

Abstract

Three dedicated reactor experiments, Double Chooz, RENO and Daya Bay, have recently performed a precision measurement of the third standard mixing angle ${\theta }_{13}$ exploiting a multiple baseline comparison of ${\nu }_e\to {\nu }_e$ disappearance driven by the atmospheric mass-squared splitting. In this paper we show how the same technique can be used to put stringent limits on the oscillations of the electron neutrino into a fourth very light sterile species (VLS$\nu$) characterized by a mass-squared difference lying in the range [$10^{-3}-10^{-1}$] eV${}^2$. We present accurate constraints on the admixture $|U_{e4}{|}^2$ obtained by a 4-flavor analysis of the publicly available reactor data. In addition, we show that the estimate of ${\theta }_{13}$ obtained by the combination of the three reactor experiments is rather robust and substantially independent of the 4-flavor-induced perturbations provided that the new mass-squared splitting is not too low ($\gtrsim 6\times 10^{-3}$ eV${}^2$). We briefly comment on the possible impact of VLS$\nu$'s on the rest of the neutrino oscillation phenomenology and emphasize their potential role in the cosmological "dark radiation" anomaly.

13 pages, 4 figures, added references, version published in JHEP

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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• Status of three-neutrino oscillation parameters, circa 2013
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• Improved Search for a Light Sterile Neutrino with the Full Configuration of the Daya Bay Experiment
• Constraining Neutrino Masses, the Cosmological Constant and BSM Physics from the Weak Gravity Conjecture
• Imprints of CP violation induced by sterile neutrinos in T2K data
• Joint short- and long-baseline constraints on light sterile neutrinos
• Search for Sub-eV Sterile Neutrino at RENO
• Assessing the role of nuclear effects in the interpretation of the MiniBooNE low-energy anomaly
• Constraining Sterile Neutrinos Using Reactor Neutrino Experiments
• Active-sterile neutrino oscillations at INO-ICAL over a wide mass-squared range
• Transition magnetic moment of Majorana neutrinos in the $\mu \nu$SSM
• Improved Measurement of the Evolution of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay
• Active-sterile neutrino mixing constraint using reactor antineutrinos with the ISMRAN set-up
• Sensitivity to sterile neutrino mixing using reactor antineutrinos
• A new mechanism for dark energy: the adaptive screening