Sterile neutrino decay as a common origin for LSND/MiniBooNe and T2K excess events

TL;DR

This paper proposes that sterile neutrino decay could explain the excess electron-like events observed in LSND, MiniBooNE, and T2K experiments, suggesting a common origin linked to sterile neutrino properties.

Contribution

It introduces a unified sterile neutrino decay model that accounts for excess events across multiple neutrino experiments, including tau neutrino interactions.

Findings

Sterile neutrino decay can produce electron-like events in various experiments.

The model links excess events in LSND, MiniBooNE, and T2K.

Sterile neutrino production in tau neutrino NC reactions is considered.

Abstract

We point out that the excess of electron-like neutrino events recently observed by the T2K collaboration may have a common origin with the similar excess events previously reported by the LSND and MiniBooNE experiments and interpreted as a signal from the radiative decays of a sterile neutrino \nu_h with the mass around 50 MeV produced in muon neutrino neutral current (NC) interactions. In this work we assumed that the \nu_h can also be produced in tau neutrino NC reactions.