Updated Constraints on Non-Standard Interactions from Global Analysis of Oscillation Data

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive global analysis of non-standard neutrino interactions, combining oscillation data and coherent scattering results to constrain their size, flavor structure, and impact on neutrino oscillation parameters.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed constraints on non-standard neutrino interactions considering their flavor and quark-type dependence, including effects on the Earth and Sun matter.

Findings

Constraints on non-standard interaction coefficients are robust across various coupling strengths.

The status of the LMA-D solution is clarified within the context of these interactions.

Explicit bounds on effective couplings affecting long-baseline experiments are provided.

Abstract

We quantify our present knowledge of the size and flavor structure of non-standard neutrino interactions which affect the matter background in the evolution of solar, atmospheric, reactor and long-baseline accelerator neutrinos as determined by a global analysis of oscillation data - both alone and in combination with the results on coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering from the COHERENT experiment. We consider general neutral current neutrino interactions with quarks whose lepton-flavor structure is independent of the quark type. We study the dependence of the allowed ranges of non-standard interaction coefficients, the status of the LMA-D solution, and the determination of the oscillation parameters on the relative strength of the non-standard couplings to up and down quarks. Generically we find that the conclusions are robust for a broad spectrum of up-to-down strengths, and we identify and quantify the exceptional cases related to couplings whose effect in neutrino propagation in the Earth or in the Sun is severely suppressed. As a result of the study we provide explicit constraints on the effective couplings which parametrize the non-standard Earth matter potential relevant for long-baseline experiments.