2011/11/14 by Melin Huang, Huang, Melin, S. D. Reitzner +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1111.3175
14 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables
arxiv created 2011/11/14 · openalex publication_date 2011/11/14 · arxiv updated 2011/11/15 · openalex created_date 2024/04/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Hints for sizable sin2 θ13 have been reported in earlier global neutrino oscillation data analyses as well as will be reported in this work, and quite recently by the Double Chooz experiment. However, as we enter the era of precision neutrino oscillation experiments, terms linear in sinθ13 will no longer be negligible, and its sign would affect the extraction of other oscillation parameters. The sign of sinθ13 also plays a crucial role in the determination of the CP-violating phase. In this work we show that by adopting an alternative parametrization for the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) mixing matrix, one already has a chance to infer the sign of each mixing angle in the conventional parametrization using existing global neutrino data. A weak preference for negative sin θ13 is found. In particular, the solar data suggest that sinθ13 > 0 while all other data the opposite. This leads to the speculation on whether the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) effect is responsible. In this work we found that in the new mixing matrix parametrization, the 68% CL constraints on the three mixing angles are comparable to those estimated in the conventional parametrization adopted in the literature. Owing to the strong correlations among the three mixing angles in the new parametrization, the advantages of doing the global neutrino oscillation analysis using data from past, current, and near future neutrino oscillation experiments shall become manifest.