5th New Physics Opportunities at Neutrino Facilities Workshop (NPN 2025)

18 Jun 2025, 08:00 → 20 Jun 2025, 12:30 US/Eastern

Alexandre Sousa (University of Cincinnati (US))

This workshop is the fifth in the series titled New Physics Opportunities at Neutrino Facilities (NPN), which aims to bring together both theorists and experimentalists and actively discuss new opportunities at the current and next-generation neutrino facilities in probing new physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). 

The workshop's focus this year will be on understanding to which level current and future experiments can measure deviations from unitarity of the three-neutrino mixing matrix, and how we can interpret theoretically any deviations observed as new physics.

The NPN 2025 workshop will be held June 18-20, 2025 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, organized by the University of Cincinnati.

The standard registration fee is $100, and the Early-Career (Students, Postdoctoral Fellows,...) is $50. 

The deadline for workshop registration is June 4, 2025.

To incentivize Early-Career participation, we will hold a dedicated 2-hour session for contributed talks on the afternoon of Thursday, June 19. The talks will be selected from abstracts submitted here, with the selection criteria taking into consideration how the proposed abstract fits with the agenda of the workshop, and the career stage of the abstract submitter. Travel support will be available for Early-Career speakers subject to funding availability. 

The deadline for Early-Career talk abstract submissions in the Call for Abstracts page is May 26, 2025.

Links to previous workshops:

NPN 2024: https://indico.ibs.re.kr/event/649/

NPN 2023: https://indico.slac.stanford.edu/event/7400/

NPN 2022: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1103445/

NPN 2019: https://indico.cern.ch/event/797505/

Organizing Committee:

Adam Aurisano (Cincinnati)
Conor Henderson (Cincinnati)
Pedro Machado (Fermilab)
Alexandre Sousa, Chair (Cincinnati)
Jure Zupan (Cincinnati)

Steering Group of the NPN Workshop Series:

Brian Batell (University of Pittburgh)
André Luiz de Gouvêa (Northwestern University)
Jong-Chul Park (Chungnam National University, Korea)
Alexandre Sousa (University of Cincinnati)
Yun-Tse Tsai (SLAC)
Jaehoon Yu (University of Texas at Arlington)

Wednesday 18 June

Registration

Plenary 1

Plenary Session 1

1 Welcome / Introduction

Speaker: Prof. Alexandre Sousa (University of Cincinnati (US))

2 PMNS Unitarity and BSM Physics

Speaker: Mark Ross-Lonergan

3 Constraining Unitarity with Long-Baseline Neutrino Measurements

Speaker: Zoya Vallari (Ohio State University)

Coffee Break

Plenary 2

4 Constraining Unitarity with Atmospheric Neutrino Measurements

Speaker: Linyan Wan

5 New Physics Prospects with Short-Baseline Neutrino Measurements

Speaker: Gray Putnam

6 New Physics with Reactor Neutrino Measurements

Speaker: Diego Venegas Vargas (University of Tennessee Knoxville/ Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Lunch

Plenary 3

7 New Physics Implications from 0νββ Decay

Speaker: Wouter Gerard Dekens

8 Unitarity constraints from Colliders and their Impact on New Physics from Neutrino Measurements

Speaker: DANIEL NAREDO TUERO

9 New Physics from Supernova Measurements

Speaker: James Kneller (NC State University)

Coffee Break

Plenary 4

10 New Physics and Cosmological Neutrinos

Speaker: Gordan Krnjaic (Fermilab)

11 Neutrino physics at Forward Experiments at the LHC

Speaker: Roshan Mammen Abraham (University of California Irvine (US))

12 protoDUNE and SPS BSM Physics Running

Speaker: Hamza Amar Es-sghir

Thursday 19 June

Plenary 5

13 Exotica Models at Beam Dumps

Speaker: Matheus Hostert

14 Beam Dump Experimental Prospects

Speaker: Dr Doojin Kim (Texas A & M University (US))

15 European Strategy Planning

Speakers: Albert De Roeck (Imperial College (GB)), Albert De Roeck (CERN)

16 Physics with Tau Neutrino Probes

Speaker: Adam Aurisano (University of Cincinnati)

Coffee Break

Plenary 6

17 Untangling Systematic Uncertainties from BSM Physics

Speaker: Dr Peter Denton (Brookhaven National Laboratory)

18 Constraining NSI with NC Interactions at LBL Experiments

Speaker: Pedro Machado (Fermilab)

19 The Role of Global Fits in New Physics Probes

Speaker: Georgia Karagiorgi

Lunch

Plenary 7

20 New MicroBooNE BNB/NuMI Beam Results

Speaker: Bannanje Nitish Nayak

21 Status of JUNO and Physics Prospects

Speaker: Juan Pedro Ochoa (University of California Irvine (US))

Workshop Photo

Coffee Break

Contributed Talks - see Call for Abstracts

22 Tau Tridents at Accelerator Neutrino Facilities

We present the first detailed study of Standard Model neutrino tridents involving tau leptons at the near detectors of accelerator neutrino facilities. The rates of these processes were previously thought to be negligible, even at future facilities. Our full $2\to 4$ calculation, including both coherent and incoherent scatterings, reveals that
the DUNE near detector could observe a considerable number of tau tridents, which is an important background to new physics searches. We identify promising kinematic features that may allow distinction of tau tridents from the usual neutrino charged-current background at DUNE, and thus establish the observation of tau tridents for the first time. We also comment on the detection prospects at other accelerator and collider neutrino experiments.

Speaker: Diego Lopez Gutierrez (Washington University in St Louis)

23 From the Mediterranean to Antarctica, via New Physics?

The KM3NeT collaboration recently reported the observation of KM3-230213A, a neutrino event with an energy of 220 PeV, nearly an order of magnitude more energetic than the highest-energy neutrino in IceCube’s catalog. Despite its larger effective area and longer data-taking period, IceCube has not observed similar events, leading to a tension quantified between ~2$\sigma$ and 3.5$\sigma$, depending on the type of neutrino source.

The 220 PeV neutrino detected at KM3NeT has traversed approximately 147 km through rock and sea, whereas neutrinos from the same location in the sky would cross only about 14 km of ice to reach IceCube. In this talk, I will show how differences in propagation distance can help resolve this tension. Specifically, I will present a scenario where the source emits sterile neutrinos that partially convert to active neutrinos via oscillations. I will present two such mechanisms: one where a new physics matter potential induces a resonance in sterile-to-active transitions, and another involving off-diagonal neutrino non-standard interactions. In both cases, oscillations over ~100 km enhance the active neutrino flux at KM3NeT with respect to the flux at IceCube. Overall, we propose the exciting possibility that neutrino telescopes have already started detecting signatures of physics beyond the Standard Model.

Speaker: Dibya S. Chattopadhyay (Oklahoma State University)

24 Enhancing Solar Neutrino Sensitivity with Neutron Tagging

Solar neutrinos offer crucial insights into neutrino properties and serve as a powerful probe of flavor oscillations in matter. However, detecting them requires effective suppression of backgrounds. One of these is spallation backgrounds—beta decays of unstable isotopes produced by cosmic-ray muons— which pose a major challenge above 5 MeV. We show that neutron tagging, made possible by the recent addition of dissolved gadolinium, provides a powerful new method to identify and reject these backgrounds. This technique is particularly relevant for future shallower detectors like Hyper-Kamiokande and JUNO.

Speaker: Obada Nairat

25 Right-Handed Neutrino Masses from the Electroweak Scale

We explore the possibility that the right-handed neutrino Majorana mass originates from electroweak symmetry breaking. Working within an effective theory with two Higgs doublets, nonzero lepton number is assigned to the bilinear operator built from the two Higgs fields, which is then coupled to the right-handed neutrino mass operator. In tandem with the neutrino Yukawa coupling, following electroweak symmetry breaking a seesaw mechanism operates, generating the light SM neutrino masses along with right-handed neutrinos with masses below the electroweak scale. This scenario leads to novel phenomenology in the Higgs sector, which may be probed at the LHC and at future colliders. There are also interesting prospects for neutrinoless double beta decay and lepton flavor violation. We also explore some theoretical aspects of the scenario, including the technical naturalness of the effective field theory and ultraviolet completions of the right-handed neutrino Majorana mass.

Speaker: Wenjie Huang (University of Pittsburgh)

26 NSI in Long-baseline Neutrino Experiments

Long-baseline neutrino experiments are currently measuring the oscillation parameters with unprecedented precision. Recent standard oscillation results from NOvA and T2K, however, show a moderate tension in the preferred value of the CP-violating phase $\delta_{\text{CP}}$, motivating the exploration of physics beyond the standard oscillation framework. Non-Standard Interactions (NSI) in neutrino propagation through matter provide a well-motivated extension of the effective matter potential, altering the neutrino oscillation probabilities. NSI introduce new sources of CP violation and have been proposed as a candidate to alleviate the tension in $\delta_{\text{CP}}$ between NOvA and T2K. Furthermore, the study and constraint of sub-leading new physics effects are necessary to precisely extract the neutrino oscillation parameters. This talk presents recent NSI results from NOvA and their impact on the determination of $\delta_{\text{CP}}$ and the neutrino mass ordering. Prospects for further NSI searches with long-baseline oscillation experiments, including a joint NOvA-T2K NSI fit, as well as with the future flagship DUNE experiment, are also discussed.

Speaker: Dr Luiz Ricardo Prais (University of Cincinnati)

27 Accelerator-Based Dark Matter Searches with the DUNE Near Detector and Beyond

Accelerator-based experiments provide a versatile platform for probing dark matter models that interact feebly with Standard Model particles. The DUNE Near Detector (ND), designed primarily for precision neutrino property measurements, is also poised to play a pivotal role in exploring sub-GeV scale dark matter via multiple search strategies. Leveraging the high-intensity proton beam, DUNE ND can investigate dark matter signatures through both standard operational mode and potentially a dedicated beam dump configuration in which neutrino flux is greatly reduced while retaining and increasing dark sector particle flux, thanks to the shortened baseline. The DUNE-PRISM capability further enriches this program by enabling off-axis measurements that help disentangle dark matter signals from neutrino-induced backgrounds, thanks to its rapidly falling flux.

Complementary to DUNE’s program, short-baseline experiments such as DAMSA (DArk Messenger Searches at Accelerator) are being developed, leveraging an extremely short, tabletop-scale baseline that enhances sensitivity to dark sector particles with relatively short lifetimes. We discuss the synergy between these experiments, the anticipated sensitivity reaches in the dark sector particle parameter space, and the potential to illuminate the nature of dark matter.

Speaker: Wooyoung Jang (University of Texas at Arlington)

28 A flavorful and dark cascade for low-scale leptogenesis

I will discuss a novel low-scale leptogenesis mechanism involving CP-asymmetric (but lepton-number-conserving) decays of sterile neutrinos, followed by a neutrino-generation-philic dark-sector cascade that generates a surplus of visible baryon number. Relevant model-building considerations and constraints will be discussed in detail.

Speaker: Tony Menzo

Workshop Dinner

Friday 20 June

Plenary 8

29 Simulation Tools for Exotic Signals

Speaker: Joshua Isaacson

30 Status of Coherent Neutrino Scattering Measurements and BSM prospects

Speaker: Daniel Pershey

31 Neutrino Magnetic Moment, Polarizability, and Charge Radius

Speaker: Sam Carey (Wayne State University)

Coffee Break

White Paper Discussion

NPN 2026

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