Neutrino Portals, Terrestrial Upscattering, and Atmospheric Neutrinos

Abstract

We consider the upscattering of atmospheric neutrinos in the interior of the Earth producing heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) which subsequently decay inside large volume detectors (e.g. Super-Kamiokande or DUNE). We compute the flux of upscattered HNLs arriving at a detector, and the resultant event rate of visible decay products. Using Super-Kamiokande's atmospheric neutrino dataset we find new leading constraints for dipole couplings to any flavor with HNL masses between roughly 10 MeV and 100 MeV. For mass mixing with tau neutrinos, we probe new parameter space near HNL masses of $\sim 20$ MeV with prospects for substantial future improvements. We also discuss prospects at future experiments such as DUNE, JUNO, and Hyper-Kamiokande.

Matches journal version

References in corpus (33)

• The fate of hints: updated global analysis of three-flavor neutrino oscillations
• How to find neutral leptons of the nuMSM?
• Feebly-Interacting Particles:FIPs 2020 Workshop Report
• Limits on sterile neutrino mixing using atmospheric neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande
• Double Bangs from New Physics in IceCube
• Gauging U(1) symmetries and the number of right-handed neutrinos
• Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background Search at Super-Kamiokande
• The Neutrino Magnetic Moment Portal: Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Direct Detection
• Resolution of puzzles from the LSND, KARMEN, and MiniBooNE experiments
• An Extended Analysis of Heavy Neutral Leptons during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• GeV-scale neutrinos: interactions with mesons and DUNE sensitivity
• Parameterization and applications of the low-$Q^2$ nucleon vector form factors
• A Dark Seesaw Solution to Low Energy Anomalies: MiniBooNE, the muon $(g-2)$, and BaBar
• Constraints from the CHARM experiment on Heavy Neutral Leptons with tau mixing
• Low-energy probes of sterile neutrino transition magnetic moments
• Neutrino Masses from a Dark Neutrino Sector below the Electroweak Scale
• Muon Capture Constraints on Sterile Neutrino Properties
• Neutrino Up-scattering via the Dipole Portal at Forward LHC Detectors
• Heavy neutral leptons below the kaon mass at hodoscopic detectors
• Neutrino beam-dump experiment with FASER at the LHC
• Explaining the MiniBooNE Excess Through a Mixed Model of Oscillation and Decay
• Luminous solar neutrinos I: Dipole portals
• Light and Darkness: consistently coupling dark matter to photons via effective operators
• Probing Active-Sterile Neutrino Transition Magnetic Moments with Photon Emission from CE$\nu$NS
• Constraining active-sterile neutrino transition magnetic moments at DUNE near and far detectors
• New constraints on tau-coupled Heavy Neutral Leptons with masses $m_N=280-970$ MeV
• Heavy Neutrino searches through Double-Bang Events at Super-Kamiokande, DUNE, and Hyper-Kamiokande
• An Active-to-Sterile Neutrino Transition Dipole Moment and the XENON1T Excess
• Three-Body Decays of Heavy Dirac and Majorana Fermions
• Shedding New Light on Sterile Neutrinos from XENON1T Experiment
• Heavy-neutrino decays at neutrino telescopes
• Luminous solar neutrinos II: Mass-mixing portals
• Sterile neutrino dark matter with dipole interaction

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Effective portals to heavy neutral leptons
• Implications of the first CONUS+ measurement of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering
• Neutrino Electromagnetic Properties
• Dipole-Coupled Neutrissimo Explanations of the MiniBooNE Excess Including Constraints from MINERvA Data
• Probing active-sterile neutrino transition magnetic moments at LEP and CEPC
• Search for the dipole portal of heavy neutral leptons at future colliders
• Testing Neutrino Dipole Portal by Long-lived Particle Detectors at the LHC
• Searching for new physics at $\mu \to e$ facilities with ${\mu }^{+}$ and ${\pi }^{+}$ decays at rest
• Illuminating the dark: mono-$\gamma$ signals at NA62
• Probing conventional and new physics at the ESS with coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering
• Modelling Heavy Neutral Leptons in Accelerator Beamlines
• Two portals to GeV sterile neutrinos : dipole versus mixing
• Long-Lived Particles and the Quiet Sun
• Dirt/Detector/Dump: Complementary BSM production at Short-Baseline Neutrino Facilities