Can OPERA help in constraining neutrino non-standard interactions?

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether the OPERA experiment's ability to detect tau neutrinos can improve constraints on non-standard neutrino interactions, especially when combined with MINOS and DoubleCHOOZ data.

Contribution

It provides a combined analysis of future neutrino data to evaluate OPERA's potential in probing non-standard neutrino interactions, highlighting the limited statistical significance of tau detection.

Findings

OPERA's tau neutrino detection is statistically limited.

High neutrino energy in OPERA offers unique L/E sensitivity.

Combined data analysis enhances constraints on non-standard interactions.

Abstract

We study how much the unique ability of the OPERA experiment to directly detect \nu_\tau can help in probing new, non-standard contact interactions of the third family of neutrinos. We perform a combined analysis of future, high-statistics MINOS and OPERA data. For the case of non-standard interactions in \nu_\mu to \nu_e transitions we also include the impact of possible DoubleCHOOZ data. In all cases we find that the \nu_\tau sample of OPERA is too small to be statistically significant, even if one doubles the nominal exposure of OPERA to 4.5E20 pot. OPERA's real benefit for this measurement lies in its very high neutrino energy and hence very different L/E compared to MINOS.