Muon Neutrino Disappearance and Tau Neutrino Appearance

TL;DR

This paper reviews the progress in studying muon neutrino oscillations, highlighting precise measurements of key parameters, the confirmation of muon to tau neutrino transitions, and the potential for future discoveries with new experiments.

Contribution

It summarizes recent experimental findings on muon neutrino oscillations and discusses prospects for future accelerator-based experiments to explore this sector further.

Findings

Precise measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters.

Confirmation of muon to tau neutrino oscillation mode.

Emerging studies of anti-neutrino oscillation parameters.

Abstract

Since evidence for neutrino oscillations was first observed in 1998, the study of muon neutrino oscillations has been aggressively pursued. In doing so, atmospheric and accelerator-based neutrino experiments have measured with the highest precision two fundamental neutrino parameters: the mass-square difference and the large mixing angle in the atmospheric neutrino sector. Furthermore, the dominant mode of these oscillations has recently been established to be from muon to tau neutrinos with both direct and indirect observations. Also, for the first time the anti-neutrino counterparts to these oscillation parameters are being studied. While a consistent picture of the mu-tau sector is thus emerging, a new generation of accelerator-based experiments using off-axis neutrino beams to access this sector could lead to new discoveries.