Exploring the Potential of Short-Baseline Physics at Fermilab

TL;DR

This paper evaluates Fermilab's short-baseline neutrino program's ability to test lepton mixing unitarity, showing it can improve current sensitivity and aid in resolving CP degeneracies, especially with an added near detector.

Contribution

It analyzes the potential of Fermilab's short-baseline and DUNE near detectors to enhance sensitivity to neutrino mixing unitarity and sterile neutrinos.

Findings

Sensitivity slightly better than current limits.

Adding a near detector significantly improves sensitivity.

Potential to resolve CP degeneracies.

Abstract

We study the capabilities of the short baseline neutrino program at Fermilab to probe the unitarity of the lepton mixing matrix. We find the sensitivity to be slightly better than the current one. Motivated by the future DUNE experiment, we have also analyzed the potential of an extra liquid Argon near detector in the LBNF beamline. Adding such a near detector to the DUNE setup will substantially improve the current sensitivity on non-unitarity. This would help to remove CP degeneracies due to the new complex phase present in the neutrino mixing matrix. We also study the sensitivity of our proposed setup to light sterile neutrinos for various configurations.