A sterile neutrino with a novel density-dependent matter potential Vs resolves multiple oscillation anomalies when Vs is negative and mixing angles are small.
The Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly
5 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
abstract
Recently new reactor antineutrino spectra have been provided for 235U, 239Pu, 241Pu and 238U, increasing the mean flux by about 3 percent. To good approximation, this reevaluation applies to all reactor neutrino experiments. The synthesis of published experiments at reactor-detector distances <100 m leads to a ratio of observed event rate to predicted rate of 0.976(0.024). With our new flux evaluation, this ratio shifts to 0.943(0.023), leading to a deviation from unity at 98.6% C.L. which we call the reactor antineutrino anomaly. The compatibility of our results with the existence of a fourth non-standard neutrino state driving neutrino oscillations at short distances is discussed. The combined analysis of reactor data, gallium solar neutrino calibration experiments, and MiniBooNE-neutrino data disfavors the no-oscillation hypothesis at 99.8% C.L. The oscillation parameters are such that |Delta m_{new}^2|>1.5 eV^2 (95%) and sin^2(2\theta_{new})=0.14(0.08) (95%). Constraints on the theta13 neutrino mixing angle are revised.
citation-role summary
citation-polarity summary
representative citing papers
PRISM multi-angle measurements in DUNE restore sensitivity to non-unitarity and sterile neutrinos in electron and muon sectors to levels achievable with small spectral uncertainties, with only marginal gains for tau neutrinos.
Updated nuclear calculations lower the gallium anomaly significance to 2.3σ.
Neutrino masses are unlikely to share the Standard Model origin of other fermion masses, with the Weinberg effective Lagrangian providing the simplest beyond-Standard-Model mechanism for small Majorana masses.