Measuring Active-to-Sterile Neutrino Oscillations with Neutral Current Coherent Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering

TL;DR

This paper proposes an accelerator-based experiment using neutral current coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering to detect active-to-sterile neutrino oscillations, aiming to definitively confirm or constrain sterile neutrino properties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup employing multiple detectors and variable baselines to search for sterile neutrinos via neutral current interactions.

Findings

Potential to definitively establish sterile neutrino existence

Constraints on sterile neutrino mixing parameters

Design considerations for germanium and liquid argon detectors

Abstract

Light sterile neutrinos have been introduced as an explanation for a number of oscillation signals at $\Delta m^2 \sim 1$ eV$^2$. Neutrino oscillations at relatively short baselines provide a probe of these possible new states. This paper describes an accelerator-based experiment using neutral current coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering to strictly search for active-to-sterile neutrino oscillations. This experiment could, thus, definitively establish the existence of sterile neutrinos and provide constraints on their mixing parameters. A cyclotron-based proton beam can be directed to multiple targets, producing a low energy pion and muon decay-at-rest neutrino source with variable distance to a single detector. Two types of detectors are considered: a germanium-based detector inspired by the CDMS design and a liquid argon detector inspired by the proposed CLEAR experiment.