A New Approach to Probe Non-Standard Interactions in Atmospheric Neutrino Experiments

Abstract

We propose a new approach to explore the neutral-current non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) in atmospheric neutrino experiments using oscillation dips and valleys in reconstructed muon observables, at a detector like ICAL that can identify the muon charge. We focus on the flavor-changing NSI parameter ${\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }$, which has the maximum impact on the muon survival probability in these experiments. We show that non-zero ${\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }$ shifts the oscillation dip locations in $L/E$ distributions of the up/down event ratios of reconstructed ${\mu }^{-}$ and ${\mu }^{+}$ in opposite directions. We introduce a new variable $\Delta d$ representing the difference of dip locations in ${\mu }^{-}$ and ${\mu }^{+}$, which is sensitive to the magnitude as well as the sign of ${\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }$, and is independent of the value of $\Delta m_{32}^2$. We further note that the oscillation valley in the ($E$, $\cos \theta$) plane of the reconstructed muon observables bends in the presence of NSI, its curvature having opposite signs for ${\mu }^{-}$ and ${\mu }^{+}$. We demonstrate the identification of NSI with this curvature, which is feasible for detectors like ICAL having excellent muon energy and direction resolutions. We illustrate how the measurement of contrast in the curvatures of valleys in ${\mu }^{-}$ and ${\mu }^{+}$ can be used to estimate ${\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }$. Using these proposed oscillation dip and valley measurements, the achievable precision on $|{\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }|$ at 90% C.L. is about 2% with 500 kt$\cdot$yr exposure. The effects of statistical fluctuations, systematic errors, and uncertainties in oscillation parameters have been incorporated using multiple sets of simulated data. Our method would provide a direct and robust measurement of ${\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }$ in the multi-GeV energy range.

arXiv comment30 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables. Published in JHEP. Matches with the published version

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• Distinguishing Non-Standard Interaction and Lorentz Invariance Violation at Protvino to Super-ORCA experiment
• Locating the Core-Mantle Boundary using Oscillations of Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Probing Lorentz Invariance Violation with Atmospheric Neutrinos at INO-ICAL
• Impact of scalar NSI on the neutrino mass ordering sensitivity at DUNE, HK and KNO
• Constraints on New Physics with Light Mediators and Generalized Neutrino Interactions via Coherent Elastic Neutrino Nucleus Scattering
• Neutrino oscillation measurements with KamLAND and JUNO in the presence of scalar NSI
• Evolution of Neutrino Mass-Mixing Parameters in Matter with Non-Standard Interactions
• The Sensitivity of DUNE in Presence of Off-Diagonal Scalar NSI Parameters
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• ${\delta }_{CP}$-free constraints on NSI parameters ${\epsilon }_{e\mu }$ and ${\epsilon }_{e\tau }$ using high-purity ${\nu }_{\mu }$ CC events at IceCube DeepCore