Reactor neutrino oscillations as constraints on Effective Field Theory

Abstract

We study constraints on the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) from neutrino oscillations in short-baseline reactor experiments. We calculate the survival probability of reactors antineutrinos at the leading order in the SMEFT expansion, that is including linear effects of dimension-6 operators. It is shown that, at this order, reactor experiments alone cannot probe charged-current contact interactions between leptons and quarks that are of the (pseudo)vector (V$\pm$A) or pseudo-scalar type. We also note that flavor-diagonal (pseudo)vector coefficients do not have observable effects in oscillation experiments. In this we reach novel or different conclusions than prior analyses of non-standard neutrino interactions. On the other hand, reactor experiments offer a unique opportunity to probe tensor and scalar SMEFT operators that are off-diagonal in the lepton-flavor space. We derive constraints on the corresponding SMEFT parameters using the most recent data from the Daya Bay and RENO experiments.

36 pages, 6 figures. v2: corrected sign error in tensor contribution (d_T); references and comments added; discussion improved. v3: analysis improved, published version

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• The Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly
• Status of non-standard neutrino interactions
• Unitarity of the Leptonic Mixing Matrix
• $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric indices and the four-dimensional A-model
• General bounds on non-standard neutrino interactions
• Non-standard neutrino interactions in reactor and superbeam experiments
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• Renormalization-group evolution of new physics contributions to (semi)leptonic meson decays
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• The Standard Model prediction for R_{e/mu}^{(pi,K)}
• A COHERENT enlightenment of the neutrino Dark Side
• The model-discriminating power of lepton flavor violating tau decays
• Non-Standard Interaction Effects at Reactor Neutrino Experiments
• Conversion of electron spectrum associated with fission into the antineutrino spectrum

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Snowmass White Paper: Beyond the Standard Model effects on Neutrino Flavor
• EFT at FASER$\nu$
• Semileptonic tau decays beyond the Standard Model
• Radiative corrections to semileptonic beta decays: Progress and challenges
• Investigating the fluxes and physics potential of LHC neutrino experiments
• Non-standard interactions in SMEFT confronted with terrestrial neutrino experiments
• Constraints on subleading interactions in beta decay Lagrangian
• DUNE potential as a New Physics probe
• Unleashing the Power of EFT in Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering
• PTOLEMY's test of generalized neutrino interactions: unveiling challenges and constraints
• Alleviating the present tension between T2K and NO$\nu$A with nonstandard neutrino interactions
• The Forward Physics Facility at the High-Luminosity LHC
• Electron Mass Singularities in Semileptonic Kaon Decays
• Searches for new interactions within the SMEFT framework at present and future colliders