Non-standard Neutrino Interactions at DUNE

TL;DR

This paper investigates how non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) could impact DUNE's measurements, potentially revealing new physics or mimicking other phenomena, and assesses DUNE's sensitivity to these effects.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of DUNE's potential to detect or constrain NSI effects and distinguish them from other new physics scenarios.

Findings

DUNE can rule out NSI effects larger than 0.1 in Fermi units if data aligns with standard neutrino model.

Large NSI effects could be detected and precisely measured by DUNE.

DUNE may identify new sources of CP violation and differentiate NSI from light neutrino states.

Abstract

We explore the effects of non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) and how they modify neutrino propagation in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). We find that NSI can significantly modify the data to be collected by the DUNE experiment as long as the new physics parameters are large enough. For example, If the DUNE data are consistent with the standard three-massive-neutrinos paradigm, order 0.1 (in units of the Fermi constant) NSI effects will be ruled out. On the other hand, if large NSI effects are present, DUNE will be able to not only rule out the standard paradigm but also measure the new physics parameters, sometimes with good precision. We find that, in some cases, DUNE is sensitive to new sources of CP-invariance violation. We also explored whether DUNE data can be used to distinguish different types of new physics beyond nonzero neutrino masses. In more detail, we asked whether NSI can be mimicked, as far as the DUNE setup is concerned, by the hypothesis that there is a new light neutrino state.