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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Measurement of neutrino oscillations using neutrino and antineutrino beams in the NOvA experiment

NOvA is a long-baseline accelerator neutrino oscillation experiment using the NuMIneutrino beam from Fermilab. Its main physics goals are to probe the 3-flavour oscillationparameters: neutrino mass hierarchy, CP-violating phase dcp and octant of .23 mixingangle by observing electron neutrino appearance and muon neutrino disappearance. Twofunctionally identical detectors are placed off-axis from the centre of the NuMI beam.The near detector at Fermilab is 100 m underground, and the far detector is locatedon the surface at Ash River, 810 km away from the beam source. The initial neutrinobeam spectra are measured using the near detector data and the oscillation parametersare extracted by fitting the observed data to the predicted neutrino spectrum in the fardetector.This thesis is centered around how to improve the sensitivity of |.m232| and .23 measurementsin the muon neutrino disappearance analysis. NOvA will take data for about12 years. The operation of the NOvA experiment for each year costs tens of millions ofdollars, thus it is valuable to maximise the sensitivity of the analysis. Three samples ofmuon neutrino events are studied in this thesis to improve the analysis sensitivities. First,higher energy muon neutrinos are investigated by extending the energy range in NOvA’scurrent standard analysis. Second, for the sample of events used in NOvA’s existing analysis,a new energy estimator which has been developed to improve the neutrino energy resolution is considered. Furthermore, in addition to binning the events as function ofenergy and hadronic energy fraction, three particle identifiers are introduced to separateneutrino events by signal purity to reduce the effects from backgrounds. Third, an additionallower purity sample of muon neutrino charged current (CC) events that look similarto neutral current events and have not been included in NOvA’s existing analyses havebeen studied.This thesis reanalyses NOvA’s data used in the 2020 analysis, corresponding to anexposure of 13.60×1020 protons on target (POT) in the neutrino beam mode recordedfrom February 6, 2014 to March 20, 2020, and 12.50×1020 protons on target in theantineutrino beam mode recorded between June 29, 2016 to February 26, 2019. Thisthesis has implemented a fit to Asimov fake data, generated where sin2 .23 = 0.59 and.m232 = 2.5 × 10-3 eV2. These sensitivity studies show that the uncertainty range of|.m232| at 1 s in the new analysis is reduced by 5.5% and the significance of maximaldisappearance rejection improves by 7.7%, compared to the standard analysis. This isequivalent to adding 11-16% more data. The best fit values of the oscillation parametersfrom fitting to the far detector (FD) data with the new analysis are found to besin2 .23 = 0.568+0.025-0.043 (sin2 .23 = 0.454+0.046-0.026) and .m232 = 2.399+0.055-0.070 × 10-3 eV2 (.m232= -2.427+0.055-0.067 × 10-3 eV2) for the normal (inverted) hierarchy. The difference in thebest fit for sin2 .23 (.m232) between the new analysis and NOvA’s 2020 analysis is around2% (1.4%). The uncertainty range at 1 s for .m232 decrease by 8% (4%) for the normalhierarchy (inverted hierarchy) compared to the standard analysis. The uncertainty rangefor sin2 .23 is close to the standard analysis. This thesis also implements the fit from combiningelectron neutrino appearance and muon neutrino disappearance. The combinedanalysis shows that the best fit values are very close to the standard analysis. However,the uncertainty range of .m232 at 1 s is reduced by 3.7% using the new analysis. The maximaldisappearance significance is not improved in the new analysis, but the new analysisslightly improves the rejection of the disfavoured octant.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Neutrino-Argon Cross Sections in MicroBooNE: Measurements Spanning Multiple Interaction Channels, Final States, and Neutrino Fluxes

Neutrinos are one of the most elusive particles in the Standard Model of particle physics due to their tiny interaction cross section, which makes them challenging to detect and study. There are three known flavors of neutrinos, and any given neutrino probabilistically oscillates between them as a function of the particle's energy and propagation distance. Experimental characterization of these oscillations elucidates fundamental properties of the neutrino and the Standard Model. Meeting the precision goals of ongoing and future oscillation measurements requires detailed modeling of the way neutrinos interact with nuclear matter. Precision modeling of these interactions is a challenging theoretical problem, rich with intricate physics effects to explore, and requires input from equally precise measurements of neutrino-nucleus interaction cross sections spanning a broad range of scattering channels. To fill this need, there is an ongoing multi-experiment effort to measure these cross sections across energies, interaction channels, and nuclear targets. This thesis describes three analyses reporting neutrino-argon cross section measurements with data from the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber detector. These span multiple interaction channels, final state topologies, and neutrino fluxes. The first analysis is a set of inclusive charged current muon neutrino cross section measurements for final states with and without protons, which provides a unique view of the hadronic final state produced in these interactions. Second is a set of cross section measurements for neutral current neutral pion production, which provides a vital dataset on this under-characterized channel. Third is significant progress on measuring neutrinos produced by kaons decaying at rest, which represents a unique opportunity to measure cross sections with a mono-energetic flux of neutrinos. These measurements are accompanied by a modeling study in the GiBUU theory framework, which probes the sensitivity of the muon neutrino and pion production measurements to the modeling of nucleon-nucleon final state interactions in neutrino-nucleus scattering.

Bogart, Benjamin [Michigan U.]↗
DOE OSTI2014

Reconciling BICEP2 and Planck results with right-handed Dirac neutrinos in the fundamental representation of grand unified E{sub 6}

The tensor-to-scalar ratio (r=0.20{sub −0.05}{sup +0.07}) inferred from the excess B-mode power observed by the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP2) experiment is almost twice as large as the 95% CL upper limits derived from temperature measurements of the WMAP (r<0.13) and Planck (r<0.11) space missions. Very recently, it was suggested that additional relativistic degrees of freedom beyond the three active neutrinos and photons can help to relieve this tension: the data favor an effective number of light neutrino species N{sub eff}=3.86±0.25. Since the BICEP2 ratio implies the energy scale of inflation (V{sub ∗}{sup 1/4}∼2×10{sup 16} GeV) is comparable to the grand unification scale, in this paper we investigate whether we can accommodate the required N{sub eff} with three right-handed (partners of the left-handed standard model) neutrinos living in the fundamental representation of a grand unified exceptional E{sub 6} group. We show that the superweak interactions of these Dirac states (through their coupling to a TeV-scale Z{sup ′} gauge boson) lead to decoupling of right-handed neutrino just above the QCD cross over transition: 175 MeV≲T{sub ν{sub R}{sup dec}}≲250 MeV. For decoupling in this transition region, the contribution of the three right-handed neutrinos to N{sub eff} is suppressed by heating of the left-handed neutrinos (and photons). Consistency (within 1σ) with the favored N{sub eff} is achieved for 4.5 TeV<M{sub Z{sup ′}}<7.5 TeV. The model is fully predictive and can be confronted with future data from LHC14.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Distinguishing neutrino mass hierarchies using dark matter annihilation signals at IceCube

We explore the possibility of distinguishing neutrino mass hierarchies through the neutrino signal from dark matter annihilation at neutrino telescopes. We consider a simple extension of the standard model where the neutrino masses and mixing angles are obtained via the type-II seesaw mechanism as an explicit example. We show that future extensions of IceCube neutrino telescope may detect the neutrino signal from DM annihilation at the Galactic Center and inside the Sun, and differentiate between the normal and inverted mass hierarchies, in this model.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

All-sky Search for Time-integrated Neutrino Emission from Astrophysical Sources with 7 yr of IceCube Data

Since the recent detection of an astrophysical flux of high-energy neutrinos, the question of its origin has not yet fully been answered. Much of what is known about this flux comes from a small event sample of high neutrino purity, good energy resolution, but large angular uncertainties. In searches for point-like sources, on the other hand, the best performance is given by using large statistics and good angular reconstructions. Track-like muon events produced in neutrino interactions satisfy these requirements. We present here the results of searches for point-like sources with neutrinos using data acquired by the IceCube detector over 7 yr from 2008 to 2015. The discovery potential of the analysis in the northern sky is now significantly below E{sub ν}{sup 2}dϕ/dE{sub ν} = 10{sup −12} TeV cm{sup −2} s{sup −1}, on average 38% lower than the sensitivity of the previously published analysis of 4 yr exposure. No significant clustering of neutrinos above background expectation was observed, and implications for prominent neutrino source candidates are discussed.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

The search for transient astrophysical neutrino emission with IceCube-DeepCore

We present the results of a search for astrophysical sources of brief transient neutrino emission using IceCube and DeepCore data acquired between 2012 May 15 and 2013 April 30. While the search methods employed in this analysis are similar to those used in previous IceCube point source searches, the data set being examined consists of a sample of predominantly sub-TeV muon-neutrinos from the Northern Sky (−5{sup ∘}<δ<90{sup ∘}) obtained through a novel event selection method. This search represents a first attempt by IceCube to identify astrophysical neutrino sources in this relatively unexplored energy range. The reconstructed direction and time of arrival of neutrino events are used to search for any significant self-correlation in the data set. The data revealed no significant source of transient neutrino emission. This result has been used to construct limits at timescales ranging from roughly 1 s to 10 days for generic soft-spectra transients. We also present limits on a specific model of neutrino emission from soft jets in core-collapse supernovae.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Constructing angular distributions of neutrinos in core-collapse supernovae from zeroth and first moments calibrated by full Boltzmann neutrino transport

Two-moment neutrino transport methods have been widely used for developing theoretical models of core-collapse supernovae (CCSN), since they substantially reduce the computational burden inherent in the multidimensional neutrino-radiation hydrodynamical simulations. The approximation, however, comes at a price; the detailed structure of angular distribution of neutrinos is sacrificed, that is the main drawback of this approach. In this paper, we develop a novel method by which to construct angular distributions of neutrinos from the zeroth and first angular moments. In our method, the angular distribution is expressed with two quadratic functions of the neutrino angle in a piecewise fashion. We determine the best parameters in the fitting function by comparing to the neutrino data in a spherically symmetric CCSN model with full Boltzmann neutrino transport. We demonstrate the capability of our method by using our recent 2D CCSN model. In this work, we find that the essential features of the angular distributions can be well reconstructed, whereas the angular distributions of incoming neutrinos tend to have large errors that increase with flux factor ($\textit{κ}$). This issue originates from the insensitiveness of incoming neutrinos to $\textit{κ}$, that is an intrinsic limitation in moment methods. Based on the results of the demonstration, we assess the reliability of electron- neutrinos lepton number (ELN)-crossing searches with the two-moment neutrino transport. This analysis is complementary to our [L. Johns and H. Nagakura arXiv:2104.04106] that scrutinizes the limitation of crossing searches with a few moments. We find that the systematic errors of angular distributions for incoming neutrinos lead to misjudgements of the crossing at $\textit{κ}$ ≳ 0.5. This casts doubt on the results of ELN-crossing searches based on two-moment methods in some previous studies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

New method for detecting fast neutrino flavor conversions in core-collapse supernova models with two-moment neutrino transport

Fast-pairwise neutrino oscillations potentially affect many aspects of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe): the explosion mechanism, neutrino signals, and nucleosynthesis in the ejecta. This particular mode of collective neutrino oscillations has a deep connection to the angular structure of neutrinos in momentum space; for instance, the appearance of electron-neutrino lepton number (ELN) angular crossings in momentum space is a good indicator of the occurrence of flavor conversions. However, many multidimensional CCSN simulations are carried out with approximate neutrino transport (such as two-moment methods), which limits access to the angular distributions of neutrinos, i.e., inhibits ELNcrossing searches. In this paper, we develop a new method of searching for ELN crossing in these CCSN simulations. The required data is the zeroth and first angular moments of neutrinos and the matter profile, all of which are available in CCSN models with the two-moment method. One of the novelties of our new method is the use of a ray-tracing neutrino transport to determine ELNs in the direction of the stellar center. It is designed to compensate for shortcomings of the crossing searches with only two angular moments. We assess the capability of the method by carrying out a detailed comparison with results of full Boltzmann neutrino transport in 1D and 2D CCSN models. In this work, we find that the ray-tracing neutrino transport improves the accuracy of crossing searches; indeed, the appearance/disappearance of the crossings is accurately detected even in the region of forward-peaked angular distributions. The new method is computationally cheap and has the benefit of efficient parallelization; hence, it will be useful for ELN-crossing searches in any CCSN models that employ two-moment neutrino transport.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Detection of ultra-high-energy neutrinos by IceCube: sterile neutrino scenario

The short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, the excess of radiation from the measurement of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the necessity of the nonbaryonic dark matter candidate, and the depletion of the neutrino flux in IceCube all seem to hint at new physics beyond the standard model. An economical way to address these issues is to invoke the existence of sterile neutrinos. We present simple extensions of the standard model with additionally three sterile neutrinos and discuss the corresponding PMNS like neutrino flavor mixing matrix. The noteworthy features of the sterile neutrino scenario advocated here are that the lightest one is almost degenerate with one of the active neutrinos, the second sterile has mass of order eV, and the heaviest one is in the keV range. In the present scenario, the short-baseline anomaly is explained through Δm 2 ~1eV 2 , the depletion of the muon neutrino flux in IceCube is explained through Δm 2 ~4.0×10 -16 eV 2 , and the dark matter problem is addressed through Δm 2 ~1keV 2 . Our proposed mixing matrix is also compatible with the observed neutrino oscillation data. We show that the high-energy muon and the tau neutrino fluxes from Gamma Ray Bursts can be depleted in IceCube by as much as 38 and 43 %, respectively. These substantial depletions in both muon and tau neutrino fluxes are due to their small but sizable mixing with the sterile neutrinos.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Neutrino Physics at a Muon Collider, and the Neutrino Kaleidoscope

Muon accelerators, a potential technology for enabling O(10 TeV) parton center of mass energy collisions, would also source an intense, collimated beam of neutrinos at TeV energies. There is currently a renewed effort to understand the possible scientific reach of such a neutrino beam in the context of neutrino physics. One possibility is the “Neutrino Kaleidoscope”: the pairing of a muon accelerator neutrino flux with a neutrino telescope detector. In particular, such a pairing would enable searches for non-standard oscillations of the beam neutrinos as they traverse the earth between source and detector. These non-standard neutrino oscillations could be sourced by Lorentz invariance violation, which a neutrino kaleidoscope could probe up to the quantum gravity-motivated Planck scale. Such a search would also have a reach on sterile neutrinos orders of magnitude beyond existing terrestrial limits. In this talk, I will introduce some of the exciting measurements being proposed with the neutrinos from a muon accelerator and then go into detail on the Neutrino Kaleidoscope concept (arxiv:2508.09249).

Putnam, Gray [Fermilab]↗
DOE OSTI2026

Probing BSM Oscillatory Signals with the DUNE Detectors and the LBNF Neutrino Beam: NSI and Sterile Neutrino Sensitivities

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a flagship long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiment under construction in the U.S. With a 1,300 km distance between its Near Detector (ND) and Far Detector (FD), the world’s most intense LBNF (Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility) neutrino beam, and high-resolution LArTPC (Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber) detectors, DUNE will measure the neutrino oscillation parameters with unprecedented precision. In addition to the determination of the neutrino mass ordering and the potential discovery of Charge-Parity violation in the leptonic sector, DUNE's capabilities present a unique opportunity for probing Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics signals with neutrinos. Examples of BSM physics manifestations include the presence of Non-Standard Interactions (NSI) of neutrinos with matter, or the existence of sterile neutrinos that mix with 3-Flavor neutrinos. In this study, we present a joint ND+FD fit to simulated data assessing DUNE's sensitivity to probing neutrino NSI, as well as scenarios including sterile neutrino mixing.

Prais, Luiz [Cincinnati U.] (ORCID:000000018224947↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Right-handed neutrino portal to the hidden sector: active neutrinos and their twins in an F-theory model

We analyze the neutrino phenomenology in an SU(5) F-theory model with both a visible sector and a twin hidden sector. At low energies, the strong and weak scales of the two sectors may differ but the spectrum of states is described by the MSSM (MSSM') in the visible (twin) sectors. What is special about the model is that there are right-handed neutrinos which couple to both sectors via Yukawa couplings. As a result, assuming 3 right-handed neutrinos with a large mass much greater than the weak scale, at tree-level the seesaw mechanism results in 3 massive Majorana neutrinos and 3 massless ones. The massless neutrinos acquire mass via radiative corrections. In our analysis, the massless neutrinos are predominantly active neutrinos, while the massive neutrinos are predominantly sterile neutrinos. We fit the active neutrino masses and mixing angles and discuss the phenomenology of the lightest sterile neutrino. Finally we consider some possible scenarios for cosmology.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Collective neutrino oscillations and neutrino wave packets

Effects of decoherence by wave packet separation on collective neutrino oscillations in dense neutrino gases are considered. We estimate the length of the wave packets of neutrinos produced in core collapse supernovae and the expected neutrino coherence length, and then proceed to consider the decoherence effects within the density matrix formalism of neutrino flavour transitions. First, we demonstrate that for neutrino oscillations in vacuum the decoherence effects are described by a damping term in the equation of motion of the density matrix of a neutrino as a whole (as contrasted to that of the fixed-momentum components of the neutrino density matrix). Next, we consider neutrino oscillations in ordinary matter and dense neutrino backgrounds, both in the adiabatic and non-adiabatic regimes. In the latter case we study two specific models of adiabaticity violation—one with short-term and another with extended non-adiabaticity. It is demonstrated that, while in the adiabatic case a damping term is present in the equation of motion of the neutrino density matrix (just like in the vacuum oscillation case), no such term in general appears in the non-adiabatic regime.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Active-sterile neutrino oscillations in the early Universe with full collision terms

Sterile neutrinos are thermalised in the early Universe via oscillations with the active neutrinos for certain mixing parameters. The most detailed calculation of this thermalisation process involves the solution of the momentum-dependent quantum kinetic equations, which track the evolution of the neutrino phase space distributions. Until now the collision terms in the quantum kinetic equations have always been approximated using equilibrium distributions, but this approximation has never been checked numerically. In this work we revisit the sterile neutrino thermalisation calculation using the full collision term, and compare the results with various existing approximations in the literature. We find a better agreement than would naively be expected, but also identify some issues with these approximations that have not been appreciated previously. These include an unphysical production of neutrinos via scattering and the importance of redistributing momentum through scattering, as well as details of Pauli blocking. Finally, we devise a new approximation scheme, which improves upon some of the shortcomings of previous schemes.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Constraints on Populations of Neutrino Sources from Searches in the Directions of IceCube Neutrino Alerts

Beginning in 2016, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has sent out alerts in real time containing the information of high-energy ($E$ ≳ 100 TeV) neutrino candidate events with moderate to high (≳30%) probability of astrophysical origin. In this work, we use a recent catalog of such alert events, which, in addition to events announced in real time, includes events that were identified retroactively and covers the time period of 2011–2020. We also search for additional, lower-energy neutrinos from the arrival directions of these IceCube alerts. We show how performing such an analysis can constrain the contribution of rare populations of cosmic neutrino sources to the diffuse astrophysical neutrino flux. After searching for neutrino emission coincident with these alert events on various timescales, we find no significant evidence of either minute-scale or day-scale transient neutrino emission or of steady neutrino emission in the direction of these alert events. This study also shows how numerous a population of neutrino sources has to be to account for the complete astrophysical neutrino flux. Assuming that sources have the same luminosity, an $E$ -2.5 neutrino spectrum, and number densities that follow star formation rates, the population of sources has to be more numerous than 7 × 10 -9 Mpc -3 . This number changes to 3 × 10 -7 Mpc -3 if number densities instead have no cosmic evolution.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Quasi-sterile neutrinos from dark sectors. Part I. BSM matter effects in neutrino oscillations and the short-baseline anomalies.

Quasi-sterile neutrinos are a natural consequence of dark sectors interacting with the Standard Model (SM) sector via neutrino- and vector-portals. Essentially, quasi-sterile neutrinos are light dark sector fermions with two generic properties: (i) they mix with the active neutrinos of the SM, and (ii) they are charged under a vector mediator that couples feebly to SM matter. Various interesting phenomenological consequences result from this class of particles. In this article, we investigate one such consequence: new, beyond the SM matter effects that can alter in-medium neutrino oscillations. In particular, for special windows of energy and matter densities, active neutrinos can resonantly oscillate into sterile neutrinos. We take advantage of this feature to build a quasi-sterile neutrino model that can explain the MiniBooNE and LSND anomalies, while remaining compatible with observations from long-baseline reactor- and accelerator-based neutrino experiments. This model is also likely compatible with the recent results reported by the MicroBooNE collaboration (albeit we cannot precisely quantify this claim due to a lack of information in MicroBooNE’s public data releases to date). Implications for solar neutrinos and $ν_e$ disappearance searches are also briefly discussed.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Searches for nonstandard neutrino oscillations at neutrino telescopes with a TeV muon accelerator source

Muon accelerators, a potential technology for enabling O ( 10 TeV ) parton center of mass energy collisions, would also source an intense, collimated beam of neutrinos at TeV energies. The energy and size of this beam would be excellently matched as a source for existing and planned neutrino telescopes: gigaton-sized detectors of astrophysical neutrinos at and above TeV energies. In this paper, we introduce the technical considerations and scientific reach of pairing a muon accelerator source of neutrinos with a neutrino telescope detector, a combination we dub the “Neutrino Kaleidoscope.” In particular, such a pairing would enable searches for non-standard oscillations of the beam neutrinos as they traverse the earth between source and detector. These nonstandard neutrino oscillations could be sourced by Lorentz invariance violation, which a neutrino kaleidoscope could probe up to the Planck scale. Such a search would also have a reach on sterile neutrinos orders of magnitude beyond existing terrestrial limits. Finally, we touch on the nonoscillation physics case for a neutrino kaleidoscope.

Kamp, Nicholas W. [Harvard U.] (ORCID:000000019232↗