Search for an Excess of Electron Neutrino Interactions in MicroBooNE Using Multiple Final State Topologies (submitted to PRL) (original) (raw)
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Dark Neutrino Portal to Explain MiniBooNE Excess
Physical Review Letters
We present a novel framework that provides an explanation to the long-standing excess of electronlike events in the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab. We suggest a new dark sector containing a dark neutrino and a dark gauge boson, both with masses between a few tens and a few hundreds of MeV. Dark neutrinos are produced via neutrino-nucleus scattering, followed by their decay to the dark gauge boson, which in turn gives rise to electron-like events. This mechanism provides an excellent fit to MiniBooNE energy spectra and angular distributions.
Heavy neutrino decays at MiniBooNE
Journal of High Energy Physics, 2013
It has been proposed that a sterile neutrino ν h with m h ≈ 50 MeV and a dominant decay mode ν h → νγ may be the origin of the experimental anomaly observed at LSND. We define a particular model that could also explain the MiniBooNE excess consistently with the data at other neutrino experiments (radiative muon capture at TRIUMF, T2K, or single photon at NOMAD). The key ingredients are (i) its long lifetime (τ h ≈ 3−7 × 10 −9 s), which introduces a 1/E dependence with the event energy, and (ii) its Dirac nature, which implies a photon preferably emitted opposite to the beam direction and further reduces the event energy at MiniBooNE. We show that these neutrinos are mostly produced through electromagnetic interactions with nuclei, and that T2K observations force BR(ν h → ν τ γ) ≤ 0.01 ≈ BR(ν h → ν µ γ). The scenario implies then the presence of a second sterile neutrino ν h ′ which is lighter, longer lived and less mixed with the standard flavors than ν h . Since such particle would be copiously produced in air showers through ν h → ν h ′ γ decays, we comment on the possible contamination that its photon-mediated elastic interactions with matter could introduce in dark matter experiments.
Selection of charged-current neutrino-induced K+K^{+}K+ production interactions in MicroBooNE
2020
MicroBooNE is an 85 ton active mass liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) neutrino detector exposed to the Booster Neutrino Beamline (BNB) at Fermilab. One of our physics goals is the precision measurement of neutrino interactions on argon in the 1 GeV energy regime. The study of neutrino interactions producing a K+K^{+}K+ in the final state can improve the background estimates for future proton decay experiments looking for the prightarrowK+nup \rightarrow K^{+}\nuprightarrowK+nu channel on argon such as DUNE. In this work we present the selection of events with a K+K^{+}K+ produced along with a mu−\mu^{-}mu− in a charged-current neutrino interaction in the MicroBooNE detector. This poster will focus on how we use the available tools for particle identification to achieve a high-purity sample.
The Short Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab
Proceedings of The 22nd International Workshop on Neutrinos from Accelerators — PoS(NuFact2021), 2022
The current status of the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) project at Fermilab is reviewed. While the installation of SBND is still in progress, ICARUS has taken its first neutrino data on beam: using both the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) and the Neutrino at the Main Injector (NuMI) beam. MicroBooNE has presently completed its data taking and is producing the world's first high statistics results on ν-Ar interactions, in both inclusive and exclusive channels. In parallel, the unexpected MiniBooNE "low energy excess" is under investigation, to search for sterile neutrinos. The physics potential for sterile neutrino searches at SBN will be outlined, with emphasis on the Neutrino-4 experiment and the possible ICARUS verification of this claim.
Vertex-finding and reconstruction of contained two-track neutrino events in the MicroBooNE detector
Journal of Instrumentation, 2021
A : We describe algorithms developed to isolate and accurately reconstruct two-track events that are contained within the MicroBooNE detector. This method is optimized to reconstruct two tracks of lengths longer than 5 cm. This code has applications to searches for neutrino oscillations and measurements of cross sections using quasi-elastic-like charged current events. The algorithms we discuss will be applicable to all detectors running in Fermilab's Short Baseline Neutrino program (SBN), and to any future liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) experiment with beam energies ∼ 1 GeV. The algorithms are publicly available on a GITHUB repository[1]. This reconstruction offers a complementary and independent alternative to the Pandora reconstruction package currently in use in LArTPC experiments, and provides similar reconstruction performance for two-track events.
Through Neutrino Eyes: The Search for New Physics
Advances in High Energy Physics, 2015
The year 2014 will mark the 60th anniversary since the neutrino detector of Frederick Reines and Clyde L. Cowan, Jr. was turned (neutrino detection in 1956). After many years, Super-Kamiokande showed in 1998 that neutrinos are massive. Today, neutrino physics has become a very active research field: there is a plethora of different neutrino experiments and theoretical studies. Subsequent measurements [2-6] of the two neutrino mass squared differences and the leptonic mixing parameters lead to a phase of precision experiments in neutrino physics. Recently the last remaining mixing angle, the 1-3 mixing angle, has been measured by the Daya Bay , Double Chooz [9, 10], and RENO [11] experiments after initial hints by T2K [12] and MINOS . Contrary to theoretical expectations from flavor symmetry considerations, it turned out to be large.
Search for sterile neutrinos using the MiniBooNE beam
2005
The Columbia University neutrino group is a workhorse of the MiniBooNE experiment, with involvments in almost all aspects of the experiment. Much of this is due to Mike Shaevitz, the group leader. Thank you, Mike, for all your intelligent vi suggestions, for sharing your knowledge and experience in neutrino physics with me, and for your common sense. The person I have worked the most closely with during these years is Jocelyn Monroe, graduate student in the Columbia group. Thank you Jocelyn, this thesis contains a lot of your efforts as well! I am sure that Jocelyn will turn the analysis described here into a much better one. I cannot remember how many cigarettes I have smoked here at Fermilab with Dave Schmitz. Thank you, Dave, for the many enlightening and fun discussions we had. Alexis Aguilar is also a graduate student in the Columbia neutrino group. Thank you, Alexis, for your willingness to help, and for your positive and humble attitude. Sam Zeller and Jon Link have been the post-doctoral fellows of the group I have overlapped the most.
A Dark Neutrino Portal to Explain MiniBooNE
2018
Enrico Bertuzzo, ∗ Sudip Jana, 3, † Pedro A. N. Machado, ‡ and Renata Zukanovich Funchal § Departamento de F́ısica Matemática, Instituto de F́ısica Universidade de São Paulo, C.P. 66.318, São Paulo, 05315-970, Brazil Department of Physics and Oklahoma Center for High Energy Physics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078-3072, USA Theory Department, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510, USA (Dated: July 27, 2018)
Arxiv preprint hep-ex/ …, 2004
Understanding the quark and gluon substructure of the nucleon has been a prime goal of both nuclear and particle physics for more than thirty years and has led to much of the progress in strong interaction physics. Still the flavor dependence of the nucleon's spin is a significant fundamental question that is not understood. Experiments measuring the spin content of the nucleon have reported conflicting results on the amount of nucleon spin carried by strange quarks. Quasi-elastic neutrino scattering, observed using a novel detection technique, provides a theoretically clean measure of this quantity. The optimum neutrino beam energy needed to measure the strange spin of the nucleon is 1 GeV. This is also an ideal energy to search for neutrino oscillations at high ∆m 2 in an astrophysically interesting region. Models of the r-process in supernovae which include high-mass sterile neutrinos may explain the abundance of neutronrich heavy metals in the universe. These high-mass sterile neutrinos are outside the sensitivity region of any previous neutrino oscillation experiments. The Booster neutrino beamline at Fermilab provides the world's highest intensity neutrino beam in the 0.5-1.0 GeV energy range, a range ideal for both of these measurements. A small detector located upstream of the MiniBooNE detector, 100 m from the recently commissioned Booster neutrino source, could definitively measure the strange quark contribution to the nucleon spin. This detector, in conjunction with the MiniBooNE detector, could also investigate ν µ disappearance in a currently unexplored, cosmologically interesting region.