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arXiv · 1710.01280

Sterile neutrino search in the NOvA Far Detector

Sijith Edayath·Adam Aurisano·Alexandre Sousa·Gavin Davies·Louise Suter·Shaokai Yang
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Abstract

The majority of neutrino oscillation experiments have obtained evidence for neutrino oscillations that are compatible with the three-flavor model. Explaining anomalous results from short-baseline experiments, such as LSND and MiniBooNE, in terms of neutrino oscillations requires the existence of sterile neutrinos. The search for sterile neutrino mixing conducted in NOvA uses a long baseline of 810 km between Near Detector (ND) at Fermilab and Far Detector (FD) in Minnesota. The signal for sterile neutrino oscillations is a deficit of neutral-current neutrino interactions at the FD with respect to the ND prediction. In this document, We will present the analysis improvements that we are implementing for future NC sterile neutrino searches with NOvA. These include: improved modelling of our detector response; the inclusion of NC 2p2h interaction modelling; implementing a better energy reconstruction techniques; and including possible oscillation due to sterile neutrinos in the ND . This improvements enable us to do a simultaneous ND-FD shape fit of the NC energy spectrum covering a wider sterile mass range than previous analyses.

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Sijith Edayath, Adam Aurisano, Alexandre Sousa, Gavin Davies, Louise Suter, Shaokai Yang. 2017-10-03. Sterile neutrino search in the NOvA Far Detector. https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.01280

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