Dirt/Detector/Dump: Complementary BSM production at Short-Baseline Neutrino Facilities

Abstract

Short-baseline neutrino (SBN) facilities are optimal for new-physics searches, including the possible production of new particles in and along the neutrino beamline. One such class of models considers states that are created by neutrino upscattering that then decay in the neutrino detector -- in the past, such upscattering has often been considered to occur in the detector itself (with a prompt decay) or in the dirt upstream of the detector. In this work, we highlight the importance of the beam dumps, situated even further upstream, for such searches. The Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam, with its iron dump, provides one such possibility. We focus on sub-GeV heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) with a transition magnetic moment, which allows this upscattering to take advantage of the high-$Z$ iron. We observe that, in addition to increased sensitivity to this model at SBND, MicroBooNE, and ICARUS, there exist distinct features in the signal events' kinematical properties when coming from production in the dump, dirt, and detector which can allow for enhanced signal-to-background separation. We highlight the complementarity of this approach to study parameter space relevant for the MiniBooNE low-energy excess, as well as in models in which the HNLs couple to a light scalar particle.

22 pages, 19 figures

References in corpus (28)

• New Developments in FeynCalc 9.0
• The chiral representation of the $\pi N$ scattering amplitude and the pion-nucleon sigma term
• The Scalar Strange Content of the Nucleon from Lattice QCD
• Matching pion-nucleon Roy-Steiner equations to chiral perturbation theory
• Sterile Neutrinos
• Dipole portal to heavy neutral leptons
• The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab
• The MiniBooNE Detector
• Accurate evaluation of hadronic uncertainties in spin-independent WIMP-nucleon scattering: Disentangling two- and three-flavor effects
• Probing axions with the neutrino signal from the next galactic supernova
• Double Bangs from New Physics in IceCube
• The Neutrino Magnetic Moment Portal: Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Direct Detection
• Supernova Constraints on MeV Dark Sectors from e+ e- Annihilations
• Supernovae and Light Neutralinos: SN1987A Bounds on Supersymmetry Revisited
• Explaining $(g-2{)}_{\mu ,e}$, the KOTO anomaly and the MiniBooNE excess in an extended Higgs model with sterile neutrinos
• Producing a new Fermion in Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering: from Neutrino Mass to Dark Matter
• Heavy neutrino decays at MiniBooNE
• Variations of the Neutralino Elastic Cross-Section with CP Violating Phases
• Direct Detection Experiments at the Neutrino Dipole Portal Frontier
• Neutrino Up-scattering via the Dipole Portal at Forward LHC Detectors
• Explaining the MiniBooNE Excess Through a Mixed Model of Oscillation and Decay
• New limits on radiative sterile neutrino decays from a search for single photons in neutrino interactions
• An Active-to-Sterile Neutrino Transition Dipole Moment and the XENON1T Excess
• Neutrino Portals, Terrestrial Upscattering, and Atmospheric Neutrinos
• Dipole-Coupled Neutrissimo Explanations of the MiniBooNE Excess Including Constraints from MINERvA Data
• Search for the dipole portal of heavy neutral leptons at future colliders
• Probing Heavy Sterile Neutrinos at Ultrahigh Energy Neutrino Telescopes via the Dipole Portal
• Modelling Heavy Neutral Leptons in Accelerator Beamlines

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Finding BSM Needles in Electromagnetic Haystacks at DUNE
• Monophotons from Scalar Portal Dark Matter at Neutrino Experiments