Dark sector origin of the KOTO and MiniBooNE anomalies

Abstract

We present a dark sector model that reproduces the KOTO, MiniBooNE and muon anomalous magnetic moment anomalies. The dark sector is comprised of a light scalar singlet $S$ that has a large coupling to a slightly heavier sterile neutrino that mixes with the active neutrinos. The scalar couples to standard model fermions via Yukawa couplings, and to photons via a higher-dimensional coupling. The KOTO signal is a result of the flavor-changing penguin process $K_L\to {\pi }^{0}S$ followed by the decay of $S$ to neutrinos. The sterile neutrino produced in neutrino-nucleus scattering at MiniBooNE decays to an active neutrino and $S$, which decays electromagnetically and creates an event excess at low energies.

10 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables. Version to appear in PLB

References in corpus (2)

• Study of the decay K+ => pi+,nu,nubar in the momentum region 140<Ppi<199 MeV/c
• Loophole in K --> pi nu nubar Search and New Weak Leptonic Forces

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Explaining $(g-2{)}_{\mu ,e}$, the KOTO anomaly and the MiniBooNE excess in an extended Higgs model with sterile neutrinos
• Neutrino Interactions with Matter and the MiniBooNE anomaly