Description
Observations of neutrino oscillations from the majority of neutrino oscillation experiments are consistent with a three-flavor framework. However, the excess of electron neutrino and antineutrino events appearing over short distances by LSND and MiniBooNE is incompatible with three-flavor oscillations, and an explanation of these data using neutrino mixing requires an additional neutrino with no couplings to the weak interaction, referred to as a sterile neutrino. These intriguing results are not conclusive and are in tension with findings from other short-baseline and long-baseline experiments.
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international project for precision neutrino physics, consisting of two detector complexes exposed to the world’s most intense neutrino beam. The Near Detectors will sample the beam near the neutrino production target, at Fermilab, Illinois whilst the Far Detector, comprised of four LArTPC modules each with 17-kton LAr mass, will be located 1300 km away at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. The high-intensity neutrino beam combined with DUNE’s capable multi-component Near Detector and massive high-resolution LArTPC Far Detector enable searches for evidence of sterile neutrino mixing with active flavors through precision measurements of interactions in both detectors. Results from an initial analysis of the sensitivity of DUNE to such measurements via a joint detector fit will be presented and prospects for sterile neutrino searches in DUNE will be discussed.
| Collaboration | DUNE Collaboration |
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