On the Role of the ${\nu }_{\tau }$ Appearance in DUNE in Constraining Standard Neutrino Physics and Beyond

Abstract

We consider the ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_{\tau }$ appearance channel in the future Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) which offers a good statistics of the ${\nu }_{\tau }$ sample. In order to measure its impact on constraining the oscillation parameters, we consider several assumptions on the efficiency for ${\nu }_{\tau }$ charged-current signal events (with subsequent $\tau \to e$ decay) and the related backgrounds and study the effects of various systematic uncertainties. Two different neutrino fluxes have been considered, namely a CP-violation optimized flux and a ${\nu }_{\tau }$ optimized flux. Our results show that the addition of the ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_{\tau }$ appearance channel does not reduce the current uncertainties on the standard 3-$\nu$ oscillation parameters while it can improve in a significant way the sensitivity to the Non-Standard Interaction parameter $|{\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }|$ and to the new mixing angle ${\theta }_{34}$ of a sterile neutrino model of the $3+1$ type.

27 pages, 12 figures. This version matches with the one published by JHEP