Explaining the MiniBooNE Excess Through a Mixed Model of Oscillation and Decay

Not scheduled
20m
Poster session Neutrino Physics Neutrino Physics Session 2

Speaker

Nick Kamp (MIT)

Description

This talk presents a model of the electron-like excess observed by the MiniBooNE experiment comprised of oscillations involving a new mass state, $\nu_4$, at $\mathcal{O}(1)$ eV and a high mass state, $\mathcal{N}$, at $\mathcal{O}(100)$ MeV that decays to $\nu+\gamma$ via a dipole interaction.
Short baseline oscillation data sets (omitting MiniBooNE appearance data) are used to predict the oscillation parameters. We simulate the production of $\mathcal{N}$ along the Booster Neutrino Beamline via both Primakoff upscattering ($\nu A \to \mathcal{N} A$) and Dalitz-like neutral pion decays ($\pi^0 \to \mathcal{N} \nu \gamma$).
The simulated events are fit to the MiniBooNE neutrino energy and visible scattering angle data separately to find a joint allowed region at 95\% CL.
An example point in this region with coupling of $3.6 \times 10^{-7}$ GeV$^{-1}$, $\mathcal{N}$ mass of 394 MeV, oscillation mixing angle of $6\times 10^{-4}$ and mass splitting of $1.3$ eV$^2$ has $\Delta \chi^2/dof$ for the energy and angular fit of 15.23/2 and 37.80/2, respectively.

Primary author

Nick Kamp (MIT)

Co-authors

Alejandro Diaz (Graduate Student at MIT) Prof. Carlos Argüelles Delgado (Harvard University) Janet Conrad (MIT) Melissa Uchida (University of Cambridge) Mike Shaevitz (Columbia University) Stefano Vergani (University of Cambridge)

Presentation materials