Damping signatures at JUNO, a medium-baseline reactor neutrino oscillation experiment

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the JUNO experiment can detect and distinguish damping effects caused by various new physics models in neutrino oscillations, potentially improving current constraints.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of JUNO's sensitivity to damping signatures from multiple new physics scenarios and proposes methods to disentangle these effects.

Findings

JUNO can significantly improve limits on $ au_3/m_3$ in $ u_3$ decay.

JUNO can better constrain the neutrino wave packet width $\sigma_x$.

JUNO can distinguish different damping signatures effectively.

Abstract

We study damping signatures at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a medium-baseline reactor neutrino oscillation experiment. These damping signatures are motivated by various new physics models, including quantum decoherence, $\nu_3$ decay, neutrino absorption, and wave packet decoherence. The phenomenological effects of these models can be characterized by exponential damping factors at the probability level. We assess how well JUNO can constrain these damping parameters and how to disentangle these different damping signatures at JUNO. Compared to current experimental limits, JUNO can significantly improve the limits on $\tau_3/m_3$ in the $\nu_3$ decay model, the width of the neutrino wave packet $\sigma_x$, and the intrinsic relative dispersion of neutrino momentum $\sigma_{\rm rel}$.