2021/02/28 by Chia-Hung V. Chang, Chia-Hung Vincent Chang, Chuan-Ren Chen +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Coupling (piping) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Electron #Energy (signal processing) #Inverse #Lepton #Meson #MiniBooNE #Muon #Neutrino #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutrino oscillation #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Pseudoscalar #Quantum mechanics #Sterile neutrino #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.104.015030
published as Phys. Rev. D 104, 015030 (2021) · 19+1 pages, 8+1 figures, and 1 table; v2: Typos fixed, figure added, note added, references added, matched to the published version
openalex publication_date 2021/07/28 · arxiv created 2021/08/03 · arxiv updated 2021/08/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recently, the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab has updated the results with increased data and reported an excess of 560.6\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi119.6 electronlike events (4.7\ensuremathσ) in the neutrino operation mode. In this paper, we propose a scenario to account for the excess where a Dirac-type sterile neutrino, produced by a charged kaon decay through the neutrino mixing, decays into a leptophilic axionlike particle (\ensuremathℓALP) and a muon neutrino. The electron-positron pairs produced from the \ensuremathℓALP decays can be interpreted as electronlike events provided that their opening angle is sufficiently small. In our framework, we consider the \ensuremathℓALP with a mass ma=20 MeV and an inverse decay constant ce/fa=10^\ensuremath-2 GeV^\ensuremath-1, allowed by the astrophysical and experimental constraints. Then, after integrating the predicted angular or visible energy spectra of the \ensuremathℓALP to obtain the total excess event number, we find that our scenario with sterile neutrino masses within 150 MeV\ensuremath\lesssimmN\ensuremath\lesssim380 MeV (150 MeV\ensuremath\lesssimmN\ensuremath\lesssim180 MeV) and neutrino mixing parameters between 10^\ensuremath-10\ensuremath\lesssim|U_\ensuremathμ4|2\ensuremath\lesssim10^\ensuremath-8 (3\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-7\ensuremath\lesssim|U_\ensuremathμ4|2\ensuremath\lesssim8\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-7) can explain the MiniBooNE data.