Constraining general U(1) interactions from neutrino-electron scattering measurements at DUNE near detector

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the DUNE near detector can constrain general U(1) gauge interactions via neutrino-electron scattering, analyzing interference effects and comparing bounds with other experiments.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of constraints on a general U(1) Z' model from DUNE neutrino-electron scattering, including interference effects and spectral analysis.

Findings

DUNE can set competitive bounds on Z' mass and coupling.

Destructive interference effects vary between neutrino and antineutrino channels.

Bin-by-bin spectral analysis reduces interference impact compared to total rate analysis.

Abstract

The neutrino-electron scattering process is a powerful tool to explore new physics beyond the standard model. Recently the possibility of DUNE Near Detector (ND) to constrain various new physics scenarios using this process have been highlighted in the literature. In this work, we consider the most general U(1) model and probe the constraints on the mass and coupling strength of the additional $Z'$ from $\nu-e$ scattering at DUNE ND. The presence of the $Z^\prime$ gives rise to extra interference effects. In the context of the general U(1) model, the destructive interference can occur in either neutrino or anti-neutrino channel or for both or none. This opens up the possibilities of getting four different type of signal in the neutrino and ant-neutrino runs of DUNE. We perform the analysis using both the total rate and binned events spectrum. Our results show that in a bin by bin analysis the effect of destructive interference is less compared to the analysis using total rate. We present the bounds on the $ m_{Z^\prime} - g_X$ plane from $\nu-e$ scattering measurements at DUNE ND and compare these with those obtained from other $\nu-e$ scattering, COHERENT, and beam dump experiments. We show that the DUNE ND can give the best bound for certain mass ranges of $Z^\prime$.