Testing beyond the Standard Model scenarios in next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments

Abstract

In this thesis, we assess the sensitivity of next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, DUNE, T2HK, and T2HKK, to three popular beyond the Standard Model (BSM) scenarios. Within the three BSM studies, we examine: (i) long-range neutrino-matter interactions induced by flavor-dependent, anomaly-free gauged baryon-lepton symmetries mediated by ultra-light vector boson, showing that DUNE and T2HK can constrain, discover, and in some favorable cases distinguish among different symmetries; (ii) Lorentz invariance violation (LIV), where we derive analytical dependencies of CPT-conserving and CPT-violating LIV parameters on baseline and energy, highlighting the superior reach of DUNE in probing all the LIV parameters, in contrast to T2HK, which is essentially blind to the CPT-conserving LIV parameters; and (iii) active-sterile oscillations over a broad range of $\hat{I}”m_{41}^2$, where we derive sensitivity to CP phases for benchmark choices of $\hat{I}”m_{41}^2$ and establish exclusion limits, emphasizing the role of near detectors. Together, these studies show that future long-baseline facilities not only resolve the neutrino mass ordering, value of $\hat{I}{´}_{\mathrm{CP}}$, and $\hat{I}{¸}_{23}$ octant, but also provide powerful probes of BSM physics.

Ph.D. Thesis (Advisor: Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla), 286 pages, 48 figures, 16 tables