2017/10/03 by S. Edayath, A. Aurisano, Edayath, Sijith +9
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1710.01280
openalex publication_date 2017/10/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The majority of neutrino oscillation experiments have obtained evidence for neutrino oscillations that are compatible with the three-flavor model. Explaining anomalous results from short-baseline experiments, such as LSND and MiniBooNE, in terms of neutrino oscillations requires the existence of sterile neutrinos. The search for sterile neutrino mixing conducted in NOvA uses a long baseline of 810 km between Near Detector (ND) at Fermilab and Far Detector (FD) in Minnesota. The signal for sterile neutrino oscillations is a deficit of neutral-current neutrino interactions at the FD with respect to the ND prediction. In this document, We will present the analysis improvements that we are implementing for future NC sterile neutrino searches with NOvA. These include: improved modelling of our detector response; the inclusion of NC 2p2h interaction modelling; implementing a better energy reconstruction techniques; and including possible oscillation due to sterile neutrinos in the ND . This improvements enable us to do a simultaneous ND-FD shape fit of the NC energy spectrum covering a wider sterile mass range than previous analyses.