Explaining the MiniBooNE Excess Through a Mixed Model of Oscillation and Decay

Abstract

The electron-like excess observed by the MiniBooNE experiment is explained with a model comprising a new low mass state ($\mathcal{O}(1)$ eV) participating in neutrino oscillations and a new high mass state ($\mathcal{O}(100)$ MeV) that decays to $\nu +\gamma$. Short-baseline oscillation data sets are used to predict the oscillation parameters. Fitting the MiniBooNE energy and scattering angle data, there is a narrow joint allowed region for the decay contribution at 95% CL. The result is a substantial improvement over the single sterile neutrino oscillation model, with $\Delta {\chi }^2/dof$ = 19.3/2 for a decay coupling of $2.8\times 10^{-7}$ GeV${}^{-1}$, high mass state of 376 MeV, oscillation mixing angle of $7\times 10^{-4}$ and mass splitting of $1.3$ eV${}^2$. This model predicts that no clear oscillation signature will be observed in the FNAL short baseline program due to the low signal-level.

16 pages

References in corpus (16)

• Measurement of the solar neutrino capture rate with gallium metal. III: Results for the 2002--2007 data-taking period
• Sterile neutrino search at NEOS Experiment
• Testing the statistical compatibility of independent data sets
• Double Bangs from New Physics in IceCube
• Cosmology with self-interacting sterile neutrinos and dark matter - A pseudoscalar model
• Thermalisation of sterile neutrinos in the early Universe in the 3+1 scheme with full mixing matrix
• Search for Sterile Neutrinos Mixing with Muon Neutrinos in MINOS
• First Constraints on the Complete Neutrino Mixing Matrix with a Sterile Neutrino
• Dual baseline search for muon antineutrino disappearance at 0.1 eV^2 < Δm^2 < 100 eV^2
• Searching for eV-scale sterile neutrinos with eight years of atmospheric neutrinos at the IceCube neutrino telescope
• Unveiling secret interactions among sterile neutrinos with big-bang nucleosynthesis
• Neutrino Masses from a Dark Neutrino Sector below the Electroweak Scale
• Muon Capture Constraints on Sterile Neutrino Properties
• New limits on radiative sterile neutrino decays from a search for single photons in neutrino interactions
• Three-Body Decays of Heavy Dirac and Majorana Fermions
• Search for neutral-current induced single photon production at the ND280 near detector in T2K

Cited by in corpus (22)

• First constraints on light sterile neutrino oscillations from combined appearance and disappearance searches with the MicroBooNE detector
• Neutrino Up-scattering via the Dipole Portal at Forward LHC Detectors
• Heavy neutral leptons below the kaon mass at hodoscopic detectors
• Search for an anomalous excess of charged-current quasi-elastic ${\nu }_e$ interactions with the MicroBooNE experiment using Deep-Learning-based reconstruction
• Sterile Neutrino Searches with MicroBooNE: Electron Neutrino Disappearance
• Heavy Neutrino searches through Double-Bang Events at Super-Kamiokande, DUNE, and Hyper-Kamiokande
• Neutrino Portals, Terrestrial Upscattering, and Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Dipole-Coupled Neutrissimo Explanations of the MiniBooNE Excess Including Constraints from MINERvA Data
• Neutrino Interactions with Matter and the MiniBooNE anomaly
• Probing Heavy Sterile Neutrinos at Ultrahigh Energy Neutrino Telescopes via the Dipole Portal
• Enhanced neutrino polarizability
• Requirements on common solutions to the LSND and MiniBooNE excesses: a post-MicroBooNE study
• Efficiently Exploring Multi-Dimensional Parameter Spaces Beyond the Standard Model
• Search for an Anomalous Production of Charged-Current ${\nu }_e$ Interactions Without Visible Pions Across Multiple Kinematic Observables in MicroBooNE
• A 17 MeV pseudoscalar and the LSND, MiniBooNE and ATOMKI anomalies
• First Search for Unstable Sterile Neutrinos with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory
• More Ingredients for an Altarelli Cocktail at MiniBooNE
• Long-Lived Particles and the Quiet Sun
• Quasi-Sterile Neutrinos from Dark Sectors I. BSM matter effects in neutrino oscillations and the short-baseline anomalies
• Dirt/Detector/Dump: Complementary BSM production at Short-Baseline Neutrino Facilities
• Enhanced search for neutral current $\Delta$ radiative single-photon production in MicroBooNE
• Enhanced active-sterile neutrino polarizability at the intensity frontier