Volume 341 - The 20th International Workshop on Neutrinos (NuFACT2018) - Wg 1
Latest Results from MINOS+ on Sterile Neutrinos search
J. Todd
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: 2019 October 30
Published on: 2019 December 12
Abstract
MINOS+ is a long-baseline neutrino oscillations experiment designed to perform high-precision measurement of $\Delta m^2_{32}$ and $\theta_{23}$ in the three-flavor neutrino oscillations model and to probe potential anomalous oscillations beyond the standard paradigm. MINOS+ utilizes the identical 1 kt Near and 5.4 kt Far Detectors used in the already successful MINOS experiment in order to sample the neutrino beam originating at the NuMI beam facility at baselines of 1 km and 735 km downstream, respectively. The comparison between observations of both charged-current and neutral-current weak interactions in the Near and Far Detectors permits searches for muon neutrino survival and for active neutrino disappearance consistent with the existence of sterile neutrino flavor states. Here we present a measurement of anomalous disappearance of muon neutrinos interpreted using a (3+1)-flavor neutrino oscillations model, and using an improved two-detector simultaneous fit technique we find no evidence consistent with the existence of sterile neutrinos. We set the most constraining limit at present on the sterile neutrino mixing parameter $\sin^{2}\theta_{24}$ for a wide range of values of the sterile neutrino mass-splitting $10^{3} > \Delta m^2_{41} > 10^{-4}$ eV$^2$.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.341.0081
Open Access