Non-standard interactions using the OPERA experiment

TL;DR

This paper explores how the OPERA neutrino experiment can better constrain non-standard neutrino interactions, especially the parameter $psilon_{}, by leveraging its higher energy beam and running strategies to resolve parameter degeneracies.

Contribution

It demonstrates OPERA's unique sensitivity to non-standard interactions and proposes optimized running strategies to improve parameter constraints over previous experiments.

Findings

OPERA can better constrain $psilon_{}$ than MINOS due to higher neutrino energies.

Running OPERA for five years each with neutrinos and anti-neutrinos improves parameter resolution.

Anti-resonance effects can suppress expected event numbers, affecting sensitivity.

Abstract

We investigate the implications of non-standard interactions on neutrino oscillations in the OPERA experiment. In particular, we study the non-standard interaction parameter $\epsilon_{\mu\tau}$. We show that the OPERA experiment has a unique opportunity to reduce the allowed region for this parameter compared with other experiments such as the MINOS experiment, mostly due to the higher neutrino energies in the CNGS beam compared to the NuMI beam. We find that OPERA is mainly sensitive to a combination of standard and non-standard parameters and that a resulting anti-resonance effect could suppress the expected number of events. Furthermore, we show that running OPERA for five years each with neutrinos and anti-neutrinos would help in resolving the degeneracy between the standard parameters and $\epsilon_{\mu\tau}$. This scenario is significantly better than the scenario with a simple doubling of the statistics by running with neutrinos for ten years.