Very Light Sterile Neutrinos at NOvA and T2K

Abstract

Over the last several years, our understanding of neutrino oscillations has developed significantly due to the long-baseline measurements of muon-neutrino disappearance and muon-to-electron-neutrino appearance at the T2K and NOvA experiments. However, when interpreted under the standard-three-massive-neutrinos paradigm, a tension has emerged between the two experiments' data. Here, we examine whether this tension can be alleviated when a fourth, very light neutrino is added to the picture. Specifically, we focus on the scenario in which this new neutrino has a mass similar to, or even lighter than, the three mostly-active neutrinos that have been identified to date. We find that, for some regions of parameter space, the four-neutrino framework is favored over the three-neutrino one with moderate (a little under two sigma) significance. Interpreting these results, we provide future outlook for near-term and long-term experiments if this four-neutrino framework is indeed true.

arXiv comment18 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables

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• Sensitivity of Hyper-Kamiokande to sub-eV Sterile Neutrinos
• Alleviating the present tension between T2K and NO$\nu$A with nonstandard neutrino interactions
• Constraining the isotropic CPT-odd coefficients of the Standard Model Extension by a combined DUNE and ESSnuSB analysis
• New parameter region in sterile neutrino searches: a scenario to alleviate cosmological neutrino mass bound and its testability at oscillation experiments