BEST potential in testing the eV-scale sterile neutrino explanation of reactor antineutrino anomalies

Abstract

Baksan Experiment on Sterile Neutrino (BEST) is presently at the stage of production of the artificial neutrino source Cr-51, the gallium exposure will start in July and proceed for three months. While aiming specifically at investigating the Gallium neutrino anomaly (SAGE and GALLEX experiments), BEST can do more and it is tempting to estimate its ability in testing sterile neutrino explanation of antineutrino (reactor) anomalies. We observe a moderate sensitivity to the region in model parameter space (sterile neutrino mass and mixing with active electron neutrino) outlined by the old reactor antineutrino anomaly and the best fit of DANSS experiment, while the Neutrino-4 favorite region falls right in the BEST ballpark. In particular, by analyzing SAGE+GALLEX and Neutrino-4 ${\chi }^2$ distributions we find that Neutrino-4 results are fully consistent with the Gallium anomaly, the significance of the combined anomaly almost reaches 4$\sigma$ level. If the BEST confirms the Neutrino-4 results, the joint analysis will indicate more than 5$\sigma$ evidence for the sterile neutrino of eV-scale mass.

arXiv comment4 pages; v2: journal version

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Experiment Neutrino-4 search for sterile neutrino and results of measurements
• White Paper on New Opportunities at the Next-Generation Neutrino Experiments (Part 1: BSM Neutrino Physics and Dark Matter)
• Neutrinoless Double-Electron Capture
• The analysis of the results of the Neutrino-4 experiment on search for sterile neutrino and comparison with results of other experiments
• Statistical Methods Applied to the Search of Sterile Neutrinos
• Sterile neutrino oscillometry with Jinping