Measuring active-to-sterile neutrino oscillations with neutral current coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering
Light sterile neutrinos have been introduced as an explanation for a number of oscillation signals at Δm2∼1eV2. Neutrino oscillations at relatively short baselines provide a probe of these possible new states. This paper describes an accelerator-based experiment using neutral current coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering to strictly search for active-to-sterile neutrino oscillations. This experiment could, thus, definitively establish the existence of sterile neutrinos and provide constraints on their mixing parameters. A cyclotron-based proton beam can be directed to multiple targets, producing a low-energy pion and muon decay-at-rest neutrino source with variable distance to a single detector. Two types of detectors are considered: a germanium-based detector inspired by the SuperCDMS design and a liquid argon detector inspired by the proposed CLEAR experiment. © 2012 American Physical Society.
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- Nuclear & Particles Physics
- 5107 Particle and high energy physics
- 5101 Astronomical sciences
- 4902 Mathematical physics
- 0206 Quantum Physics
- 0202 Atomic, Molecular, Nuclear, Particle and Plasma Physics
- 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Related Subject Headings
- Nuclear & Particles Physics
- 5107 Particle and high energy physics
- 5101 Astronomical sciences
- 4902 Mathematical physics
- 0206 Quantum Physics
- 0202 Atomic, Molecular, Nuclear, Particle and Plasma Physics
- 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences