Explaining the MiniBooNE Excess Through a Mixed Model of Oscillation and Decay

14 Jul 2021, 15:30
15m
Track F (Zoom)

Track F

Zoom

talk Neutrino Physics Neutrinos

Speaker

Nicholas Kamp (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Description

This talk presents a model of the electron-like excess observed by the MiniBooNE experiment comprised of oscillations involving a new mass state, $\nu_4$, at $\mathcal{O}(1)$ eV and a high mass state, $\mathcal{N}$, at $\mathcal{O}(100)$ MeV that decays to $\nu+\gamma$ via a dipole interaction.
Short baseline oscillation data sets (omitting MiniBooNE appearance data) are used to predict the oscillation parameters. We simulate the production of $\mathcal{N}$ along the Booster Neutrino Beamline via both Primakoff upscattering ($\nu A \to \mathcal{N} A$) and Dalitz-like neutral pion decays ($\pi^0 \to \mathcal{N} \nu \gamma$).
The simulated events are fit to the MiniBooNE neutrino energy and visible scattering angle data separately to find a joint allowed region at 95% CL.
An example point in this region with coupling of $3.6 \times 10^{-7}$ GeV$^{-1}$, $\mathcal{N}$ mass of 394 MeV, oscillation mixing angle of $6\times 10^{-4}$ and mass splitting of $1.3$ eV$^2$ has $\Delta \chi^2/dof$ for the energy and angular fit of 15.23/2 and 37.80/2, respectively.

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Primary author

Nicholas Kamp (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Co-authors

Alejandro Diaz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Carlos A. Argüelles-Delgado (Harvard University) Michael Shaevitz (Columbia University) Melissa Uchida (University of Cambridge (GB)) Stefano Vergani janet conrad (MIT)

Presentation materials