Constraining non-unitary neutrino mixing using matter effects in atmospheric neutrinos at INO-ICAL

Abstract

The mass-induced neutrino oscillation is a well established phenomenon that is based on the unitary mixing among three light active neutrinos. Remarkable precision on neutrino mixing parameters over the last decade or so has opened up the prospects for testing the possible non-unitarity of the standard 3$\nu$ mixing matrix, which may arise in the seesaw extensions of the Standard Model due to the admixture of three light active neutrinos with heavy isosinglet neutrinos. Because of this non-unitary neutrino mixing (NUNM), the oscillation probabilities among the three active neutrinos would be altered as compared to the probabilities obtained assuming a unitary 3$\nu$ mixing matrix. In such a NUNM scenario, neutrinos can experience an additional matter effect due to the neutral current interactions with the ambient neutrons. Atmospheric neutrinos having access to a wide range of energies and baselines can experience a significant modifications in Earth's matter effect due to NUNM. In this paper, we study in detail how the NUNM parameter $\alpha_{32}$ affects the muon neutrino and antineutrino survival probabilities in a different way. Then, we place a comparable and complementary constraint on $\alpha_{32}$ in a model independent fashion using the proposed 50 kt magnetized Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) detector under the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) project, which can efficiently detect the atmospheric $\nu_\mu$ and $\bar\nu_\mu$ separately in the multi-GeV energy range. Further, we discuss the advantage of charge identification capability of ICAL and the impact of uncertainties in oscillation parameters while constraining $\alpha_{32}$. We also compare the $\alpha_{32}$ sensitivity of ICAL with that of future long-baseline experiments DUNE and T2HK in isolation and combination.