Sensitivity to light sterile neutrinos at ESSnuSB

• Published in: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Main Authors: Ghosh, Monojit, Ohlsson, Tommy, Rosauro-Alcaraz, Salvador
• Other Authors: UAM. Departamento de Física Teórica
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer 2021
• Subjects: Beyond Standard Model; CP violation; Neutrino Physics; Física; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10486/694362; https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP03(2020)026

We present a comprehensive analysis in the 3+1 active-sterile neutrino oscillation scenario for the sensitivity of the ESSnuSB experiment in the presence of light sterile neutrinos assuming both a far (FD) and a near (ND) detector. Our analysis show that when the ND is included, the results are significantly different compared to the ones obtained with the FD only. We find that the capability of ESSnuSB to constrain the sterile mixing parameters is sin2 2θμe∼ 10−4 for ∆m2 = 1 eV2 if the ND is included and it becomes sin2 2θμe∼ 10−2 without the ND. Furthermore, we show that the sensitivity can go down to sin2 2θμe∼ 10−3 for the most conservative choice of the systematics on the ND. Comparing the sensitivity with T2HK, T2HKK, and DUNE by considering the FD only, we find that the sensitivity of ESSnuSB is smaller for most of the parameter space. Studying the CP violation sensitivity, we find that if the ND is included, it can be larger in the 3+1 scenario than in the standard one. However, if the ND is not included, the sensitivity is smaller compared to the one in the standard scenario. We also find that the CP violation sensitivity due to δ13 is larger compared to the one induced by δ24. The sensitivities are slightly better for the dominant neutrino running ratio of ESSnuSB This project is supported by the COST Action CA15139 “Combining forces for a novel European facility for neutrino-antineutrino symmetry-violation discovery” (EuroNuNet). It has also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 777419. T.O. acknowledges support by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsr˚adet) through Contract No. 2017-03934 and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology for a sabbatical period at the University of Iceland. S.R. acknowledges support from the “Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación” (AEI) and the EU “Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional” (FEDER) through the project FPA2016-78645-P and the Spanish MINECO through the Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa Program under grant SEV-2016-0597, as well as from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreements 674896-Elusives and 690575-InvisiblesPlus