EFT analysis of New Physics at COHERENT with Dirac neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper investigates how COHERENT experiments can detect new physics involving right-handed Dirac neutrinos within a comprehensive effective field theory framework, including flavor effects in production and detection, and provides current constraints and future sensitivity estimates.

Contribution

It introduces the first flavor-general analysis of non-standard neutrino interactions in both production and detection within the $ u$WEFT framework, including right-handed Dirac neutrinos.

Findings

Current COHERENT data constrain new physics operators.

Future experiments could significantly improve sensitivity.

Results are easily implementable in ongoing analyses.

Abstract

We study the sensitivity of COHERENT-like experiments to non-standard contributions within the so-called $\nu$WEFT framework. The latter is the most general low-energy effective field theory that includes not only the light SM fields but also additional right-handed Dirac neutrinos. Our analysis includes for the first time flavor-general New Physics effects in neutrino production (pion and muon decays) and neutrino detection (through Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering). Despite the generality, the results can be written in compact form and are easy to implement in existing or future analyses using effective nuclear charges. We use current COHERENT data to set constraints on the corresponding effective operators, and we estimate the sensitivity of future measurements.