MicroBooNE’s Search for a Single Sterile Neutrino using Two Beams

by Dr Jessie Micallef (Tufts University (and MIT))

Tuesday 27 Jan 2026, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Zurich

500/1-001 - Main Auditorium (CERN)

 

Neutrino physics has been plagued by a series of appearance and disappearance anomalies that deviate from the predicted three-flavor model, which has been seen across experiments that span different neutrino sources, detector targets, and energy scales. A possible explanation for these unexpected excesses and deficits would be one or more additional neutrino flavors that only mix with other neutrino flavors and do not otherwise interact—called sterile neutrinos. MicroBooNE was built to test these theories, strategically placed in the same beamline less than 100 m away from the MiniBooNE experiment, where anomalous results had previously been seen. MicroBooNE uses an 85-tonne Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC), providing more detailed neutrino images than its predecessor. Furthermore, MicroBooNE uses data from two accelerator beams at Fermilab, one along its axis and the other at an angle, to disentangle competing flavor oscillation effects and improve the strength of the analysis. This talk will discuss the result published in Nature in December: MicroBooNE has excluded, at 95% CL, the parameter phase space for a single sterile neutrino that would explain past anomalous experiments such as LSND and MiniBooNE.

 

Refreshments will be served at 10:30

MicallefJ_MicroBooNE3+1_CERNSeminar.pdf

Recording