The Effect of a Light Sterile Neutrino at NO$\nu$A and DUNE

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the presence of light sterile neutrinos could affect the ability of NOvA and DUNE experiments to resolve neutrino oscillation parameter degeneracies, potentially complicating the interpretation of experimental data.

Contribution

It analyzes the impact of sterile neutrinos on degeneracy resolution in neutrino oscillation experiments and assesses how DUNE could improve parameter determination.

Findings

Sterile neutrinos can significantly alter oscillation probabilities.

Degeneracy resolution may be compromised by sterile neutrinos.

DUNE's data could help mitigate degeneracy issues.

Abstract

Now that the NOvA experiment is approaching two years run time and has released some preliminary data, some constraints for the oscillation parameters can be inferred. Currently the best fits for NOvA are three separate results, the reason they are indistinct is that they produce almost degenerate probability curves. It has been postulated that these degeneracies can be resolved by running antineutrinos at NOvA and/or combining its data with T2K. However, this degeneracy resolution power can be compromised if sterile neutrinos are present due to additional degrees of freedom that can significantly alter the oscillation probability for any of the current best fits. We aim to investigate this degradation in predictive power and the effect of the DUNE experiment on it. Now that the NOvA experiment has been running for a few years and has released some preliminary data, some constraints for the oscillation parameters can be inferred. The best fits for NOvA include three degenerate results, the reason they are indistinct is that they produce almost degenerate probability curves. It has been postulated that these degeneracies can be resolved by running antineutrinos at NOvA and/or combining its data with T2K. However, this degeneracy resolution power can be compromised if sterile neutrinos are present due to additional degrees of freedom that can significantly alter the oscillation probability for any of these best fits. We aim to investigate this degradation in predictive power and the effect of the DUNE experiment on it. In light of the 2018 NOvA data we also consider the same fits but with theta_{23}=45 to see if the sensitivity results are different.