New MiniBooNE Results

TL;DR

MiniBooNE's recent results show an unexplained low-energy excess of electron-like events, challenging simple neutrino oscillation models and providing proof-of-principle for off-axis beam techniques in future experiments.

Contribution

The paper presents new low-energy neutrino data from MiniBooNE and NuMI beams, highlighting an unexplained excess and validating off-axis beam concepts for future neutrino research.

Findings

Unexplained excess of 128.8 electron-like events at low energies.

NuMI data indicates a possible excess despite large systematic errors.

Higher energy data rules out simple two-neutrino oscillation explanations.

Abstract

The MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab was designed to be a definitive test of the LSND evidence for neutrino oscillations and has recently reported first results of a search for electron-neutrino appearance in a muon-neutrino Booster beam. No significant excess of events was observed at higher energies, but a sizable excess of events was observed at lower energies. The lack of the excess at higher energies allowed MiniBooNE to rule out simple two-neutrino oscillations as an explanation of the LSND signal. However, the excess at lower energies is presently unexplained. A new data set of neutrinos from the NuMI beam line measured with the MiniBooNE detector at Fermilab has been analyzed. The measurement of NuMI neutrino interactions in MiniBooNE provide a clear proof-of-principle of the off-axis beam concept that is planned to be used by future neutrino experiments such as T2K and NOvA. Moreover, it complements the first oscillation results and will help to determine whether the lower-energy excess is due to background or to new physics. New results from the re-analysis of low energy excess from the Booster beam line and the results from measurements of neutrino interactions from NuMI beam line are discussed. MiniBooNE observes an unexplained excess of $128.8 \pm 20.4 \pm 38.3$ electron-like events in the energy region $200 < E_{\nu} < 475$ MeV. The NuMI data sample currently has a large systematic errors associated with $\nu_{e}$ events, but shows an indication of an excess.