Secret interactions of neutrinos with light new gauge bosons, $Z^\prime$, can lead to a rich phenomenology in supernova explosion as well as in the early Universe. This interaction can also lead to new decay modes for charged mesons, $π^+ (K^+) \to e^+ νZ'$, and subsequently to $Z'\to ν\barν$. After demonstrating that such an interaction can be accommodated within viable electroweak symmetric models, we study how the near detector (ND) of DUNE can probe this scenario. We also discuss how the DUNE ND can make it possible to reconstruct the flavor structure of the $Z^\prime$ coupling to neutrinos.
New gauge bosons coupling to leptons are simple and well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model. We study the sensitivity to gauged $L_μ -L_{e}$, $L_e-L_τ$ and $L_μ -L_τ$ both with the existing beam dump mode data of MiniBooNE and with the DUNE near detector. We find that including bremsstrahlung and resonant production of $Z'$ which decays to $e^{\pm}$ and $μ^{\pm}$ final states leads to a significant improvement in existing bounds, especially for $L_μ-L_e$ and $L_e-L_τ$ for DUNE while competitive constraints can be achieved with the existing data from the MiniBooNE's beam dump run.
The low-energy $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge symmetry is well-motivated as part of beyond Standard Model physics related to neutrino mass generation. We show that a light $B-L$ gauge boson $Z{'}$ and the associated $U(1)_{B-L}$-breaking scalar $φ$ can both be effectively searched for at high-intensity facilities such as the near detector complex of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). Without the scalar $φ$, the $Z{'}$ can be probed at DUNE up to mass of 1 GeV, with the corresponding gauge coupling $g_{BL}$ as low as $10^{-9}$. In the presence of the scalar $φ$ with gauge coupling to $Z{'}$, …
One proposed component of the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) near detector complex is a multi-purpose, magnetized, gaseous argon time projection chamber: the Multi-Purpose Detector (MPD). We explore the new-physics potential of the MPD, focusing on scenarios in which the MPD is significantly more sensitive to new physics than a liquid argon detector, specifically searches for semi-long-lived particles that are produced in/near the beam target and decay in the MPD. The specific physics possibilities studied are searches for dark vector bosons mixing kinetically with the St…
The planned DUNE experiment will have excellent sensitivity to the vector and axial couplings of the electron to the $Z$-boson via precision measurements of neutrino--electron scattering. We investigate the sensitivity of DUNE-PRISM, a movable near detector in the direction perpendicular to the beam line, and find that it will qualitatively impact our ability to constrain the weak couplings of the electron. We translate these neutrino--electron scattering measurements into a determination of the weak mixing angle at low scales and estimate that, with seven years of data taking, the DUNE near-d…
We study how nonstandard neutrino interactions (NSI) may be probed by a combination of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, neutrino oscillation and collider data, from COHERENT, DUNE, T2HK and the high-luminosity (HL) LHC. We focus on NSI induced by a new flavored gauge boson $Z'$ in a generic anomaly-free ultraviolet-complete model. For $Z'$ masses above 10 GeV, the HL-LHC has the best sensitivity regardless of the flavor structure of the model. For masses between 0.01 GeV-10 GeV, current LHCb data and future COHERENT data have the best sensitivity unless the $Z'$ couplings to the f…
Light sterile neutrinos can be probed in a number of ways, including electroweak decays, cosmology and neutrino oscillation experiments. At long-baseline experiments, the neutral-current data is directly sensitive to the presence of light sterile neutrinos: once the active neutrinos have oscillated into a sterile state, a depletion in the neutral-current data sample is expected since they do not interact with the $Z$ boson. This channel offers a direct avenue to probe the mixing between a sterile neutrino and the tau neutrino, which remains largely unconstrained by current data. In this work, …
We propose a novel and simple mechanism where sizable effects of non-standard interactions (NSI) in neutrino propagation are induced from the mixing between an electrophilic second Higgs doublet and a charged singlet. The mixing arises from a dimensionful coupling of the scalar doublet and singlet to the standard model Higgs boson. In light of the small mass, the light mass eigenstate from the doublet-singlet mixing can generate much larger NSI than those induced by the heavy eigenstate. We show that a sizable NSI $\varepsilon_{eτ}$ ($\sim 0.3$) can be attained without being excluded by a vari…
Highly energetic proton/electron beam fixed target experiments extends an opportunity to probe the sub-GeV dark matter and associated interactions. In this work we have explored the sensitivity of DUNE for sub-GeV leptophobic dark matter i.e. this dark matter barely couples with the leptons. Baryon number gauge theory can predicts the existence of a leptophobic cold dark matter particle candidates. In our work, the dark matter candidate is considered to be scalar whose mass is defined by the symmetry breaking of new baryonic gauge group $U(1)_{B}$. In this scenario a light scalar dark matter c…
Secret neutrino interactions can play an essential role in the origin of dark matter. We present an anatomy of production mechanisms for sterile neutrino dark matter, a keV-scale gauge-singlet fermion that mixes with active neutrinos, in the presence of a new vector boson mediating secret interactions among active neutrinos. We identify three regimes of the vector boson's mass and coupling where it makes distinct impact on dark matter production through the dispersion relations and/or scattering rates. We also analyze models with gauged $L_μ-L_τ$ and $B-L$ numbers which have a similar dark mat…
We study the impact of the coupling of neutrinos with a new light neutral gauge boson, $Z^\prime$, with a mass of less than 500 {\rm MeV} in FASER$ν$ experiment. Scenarios in which a light gauge boson is coupled to neutrinos are motivated within numerous contexts which are designed to explain various anomalies in particle physics and cosmology. This interaction leads to a new decay mode for charged mesons to a light lepton plus neutrino and $Z^{\prime}$, ($π^+(K^+)\to e^+ νZ^\prime$) followed by the subsequent decay of $Z^\prime$ into the pair of neutrino and anti-neutrino, ($Z^\prime \to ν\ba…
We point out that light gauge boson mediators could induce new interference effects in neutrino-electron scattering that can be used to enhance the sensitivity of neutrino-flavor-selective high-intensity neutrino experiments, such as DUNE. We particularly emphasize a destructive interference effect, leading to a deficit between the Standard Model expectation and the experimental measurement of the differential cross-sections, which is prominent only in either the neutrino or the antineutrino mode, depending on the mediator couplings. Therefore, the individual neutrino (or antineutrino) mode co…
While three flavors of "active" neutrinos are consistent with mixing angle results within error bars, there are anomalies may be hints of physics beyond the standard model that can accommodate a fourth mostly "sterile" neutrino species with an eV-scale mass and a mixing angle with active neutrinos of order $θ_0\simeq 0.1$. We describe a scenario with eV-scale sterile neutrinos that have self-interactions via a new gauge vector boson, a "secret" mediator $ϕ$. We show that their production in the early Universe via mixing with active neutrinos is consistent with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and free…
Secret coupling of neutrinos to a new light vector boson, $Z'$, with a mass smaller than 100 MeV is motivated within a myriad of scenarios which are designed to explain various anomalies in particle physics and cosmology. Due to the longitudinal component of the massive vector boson, the rates of three-body decay of charged mesons ($M$) such as the pion and the kaon to the light lepton plus neutrino and $Z'$ ($M \to l νZ'$) are enhanced by a factor of $(m_M/m_{Z'})^2$. On the other hand, the standard two body decay $M \to l ν$ is suppressed by a factor of $(m_l/m_M)^2$ due to chirality. We sho…
Sterile neutrinos with mass in the eV-scale and large mixings of order $θ_0\simeq 0.1$ could explain some anomalies found in short-baseline neutrino oscillation data. Here, we revisit a neutrino portal scenario in which eV-scale sterile neutrinos have self-interactions via a new gauge vector boson $ϕ$. Their production in the early Universe via mixing with active neutrinos can be suppressed by the induced effective potential in the sterile sector. We study how different cosmological observations can constrain this model, in terms of the mass of the new gauge boson, $M_ϕ$, and its coupling to s…
We investigate possible interactions between neutrinos and massive scalar bosons via $g^{}_ϕ \overlineν νϕ$ (or massive vector bosons via $g^{}_V \overlineν γ^μνV^{}_μ$) and explore the allowed parameter space of the coupling constant $g^{}_ϕ$ (or $g^{}_V$) and the scalar (or vector) boson mass $m^{}_ϕ$ (or $m^{}_V$) by requiring that these secret neutrino interactions (SNIs) should not spoil the success of Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). Incorporating the SNIs into the evolution of the early Universe in the BBN era, we numerically solve the Boltzmann equations and compare the predictions for …
The origin of neutrino mass is a big unsolved problem of the Standard Model (SM) that motivate us to consider beyond the SM (BSM) scenarios where SM-singlet right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) are introduced to explain the origin of the light neutrino masses through the seesaw mechanism. There is a variety of ways which could lead us to this goal and one of them is a general U$(1)$ extension of the SM. In this scenario, three SM-singlet RHNs are introduced to cancel the gauge and mixed gauge gravity anomalies. After anomaly cancellation, we notice that the left- and right-handed charged fermions are…
We show that the $R_K$ puzzle in LHCb data and the discrepancy in the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon can be simultaneously explained if a 10 MeV mass $Z^\prime$ boson couples to the muon but not the electron, and that clear evidence of the nonstandard matter interactions of neutrinos induced by this coupling may be found at DUNE.
Neutrino Tridents and $W$-boson production at the Muon Collider
Universität Bonn（波恩大学）；National Centre for Nuclear Research（国家核研究中心）；Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院尼古拉·哥白尼天文学中心）；The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory（费米国家加速器实验室）；University of Chicago（芝加哥大学）
Sterile neutrinos with mass ~1 eV and order 10% mixing with active neutrinos have been proposed as a solution to anomalies in neutrino oscillation data, but are tightly constrained by cosmological limits. It was recently shown that these constraints are avoided if sterile neutrinos couple to a new MeV-scale gauge boson A'. However, even this scenario is restricted by structure formation constraints when A'-mediated collisional processes lead to efficient active-to-sterile neutrino conversion after neutrinos have decoupled. In view of this, we reevaluate in this paper the viability of sterile n…
The triplet scalars $(Δ=Δ^{++},Δ^{+},Δ^{0})$, utilized in the so-called Type-II seesaw model to explain the lightness of neutrinos, would generate nonstandard interactions (NSI) for neutrino propagating in matter. We investigate the prospects to probe these interactions in long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. We analyze the upper bounds that the proposed DUNE experiment might set on the nonstandard parameters and numerically derive upper bounds, as function of the lightest neutrino mass, on the ratio the mass $M_Δ$ of the triplet scalars and strength $|λ_ϕ|$ of the coupling $ϕϕΔ$ of…
Non-standard neutrino interactions with a massive boson can produce the bosons in the core of core-collapse supernovae (SNe). After the emission of the bosons from the SN core, their subsequent decays into neutrinos can modify the SN neutrino flux. We show future observations of neutrinos from a next galactic SN in Super-Kamiokande (SK) and Hyper-Kamiokande (HK) can probe flavor-universal non-standard neutrino couplings to a light boson, improving the previous limit from the SN 1987A neutrino burst by several orders of magnitude. We also discuss sensitivity of the flavor-universal non-standard…
We show that the PeV neutrinos detected by IceCube put unique constraints on "secret" interactions of neutrinos with the cosmic neutrino background (C$ν$B). The coupling must be $g <0.03$ for the mediating boson mass $m_{X} \lesssim 2$ MeV, $g/m_{X} < 5$ GeV$^{-1}$ for $m_{X} \gtrsim 20$ MeV, and $g/m_{X} < 0.07$ GeV$^{-1}$ in between. We also investigate the possibility that neutrino cascades degrade high-energy neutrinos to PeV energies by upgrading C$ν$B where the energy flux of PeV neutrinos can coincide with the Waxman-Bahcall bound or the cosmogenic neutrino flux for protons, thanks to e…
A number of experimental anomalies involving neutrinos hint towards the existence of at least an extra (a very light) sterile neutrino. However, such a species, appreciably mixing with the active neutrinos, is disfavored by different cosmological observations like Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Large Scale Structure (LSS). Recently, it was shown that the presence of additional interactions in the sterile neutrino sector via light bosonic mediators can make the scenario cosmologically viable by suppressing the production of the sterile neutrinos from activ…
The Standard Model gauge group can be extended with minimal matter content by introducing anomaly free U(1) symmetry, such as $L_e-L_μ$ or $L_e-L_τ$. If the neutral gauge boson corresponding to this abelian symmetry is ultra-light, then it will give rise to flavor-dependent long-range leptonic force, which can have significant impact on neutrino oscillations. For an instance, the electrons inside the Sun can generate a flavor-dependent long-range potential at the Earth surface, which can suppress the $ν_μ \to ν_e$ appearance probability in terrestrial experiments. The sign of this potential is…
Secret contact interactions among eV sterile neutrinos, mediated by a massive gauge boson $X$ (with $M_X \ll M_W$), and characterized by a gauge coupling $g_X$, have been proposed as a mean to reconcile cosmological observations and short-baseline laboratory anomalies. We constrain this scenario using the latest Planck data on Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, and measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). We consistently include the effect of secret interactions on cosmological perturbations, namely the increased density and pressure fluctuations in the neutrino fluid, and st…
We construct UV-complete models for non-standard neutrino interactions mediated by a sub-GeV gauge boson Z' coupled to baryon number $B$ or $B-L$. A flavor-dependent Z' coupling to neutrinos is induced by mixing a U(1)'-charged Dirac fermion with the active neutrinos, naturally suppressing flavor violation or non-universality of the charged leptons to the loop level. We show that these models can give rise to large flavor-conserving as well as flavor-violating non-standard neutral-current neutrino interactions potentially observable in current or future oscillation experiments such as DUNE wit…
Secret interactions among sterile neutrinos have been recently proposed as an escape-route to reconcile eV sterile neutrino hints from short-baseline anomalies with cosmological observations. In particular models with coupling g_X \gtrsim 10^{-2} and gauge boson mediators $X$ with $M_X \lesssim 10$ MeV lead to large matter potential suppressing the sterile neutrino production before the neutrino decoupling. With this choice of parameter ranges, big bang nucleosynthesis is left unchanged and gives no bound on the model. However, we show that at lower temperatures when active-sterile oscillation…
Thanks to high precision long baseline neutrino experiments such as NO$ν$A and DUNE, possible effects of Non-Standard neutrino Interactions (NSI) on neutrino oscillation data have received renewed interest in the last two years. It is however challenging to build models that can give rise to NSI with sizeable couplings discernible at neutrino oscillation experiments without violating the various existing experimental bounds. We introduce two viable models that can lead to neutral current NSI with sizable couplings. Both models are based on a new $U(1)^\prime$ gauge symmetry with $Z^\prime$ gau…
Short-baseline neutrino anomalies suggest the existence of low-mass ( m \sim O(1)~eV) sterile neutrinos ν_s. These would be efficiently produced in the early universe by oscillations with active neutrino species, leading to a thermal population of the sterile states seemingly incompatible with cosmological observations. In order to relieve this tension it has been recently speculated that new "secret" interactions among sterile neutrinos, mediated by a massive gauge boson X (with M_X << M_W), can inhibit or suppress the sterile neutrino thermalization, due to the production of a large matter p…
(Abridged) Neutrino interactions beyond the standard model may affect the cosmological evolution and can be constrained through observations. We consider the possibility that neutrinos possess secret scalar or pseudoscalar interactions mediated by the Nambu-Goldstone boson of a still unknown spontaneously broken global $U(1)$ symmetry, as in, e.g. , Majoron models. In such scenarios, neutrinos still decouple at $T\simeq 1$ MeV, but become tightly coupled again ('recouple') at later stages of the cosmological evolution. We use available observations of CMB anisotropies, including Planck 2013 an…
Neutrino and dark matter experiments with large-volume ($\gtrsim 1$ ton) detectors can provide excellent sensitivity to signals induced by energetic light dark matter coming from the present universe. Taking boosted dark matter as a concrete example of energetic light dark matter, we scrutinize two representative search channels, electron scattering and proton scattering including deep inelastic scattering processes, in the context of elastic and inelastic boosted dark matter, in a completely detector-independent manner. In this work, a dark gauge boson is adopted as the particle to mediate th…
The observation of neutrino oscillation as well as the recent experimental result on lepton flavor universality (LFU) violation in $B$ meson decays are indications of new physics beyond the Standard Model. Many theoretical models, which are introduced in the literature as an extension of SM to explain these observed deviations in LFU, lead to new kind of interactions so-called non-standard interaction (NSI) between the elementary particles. In this paper, we consider a model with an additional $Z'$ boson (which is quite successful in explaining the observed LFU anomalies) and analyze its effec…
TeV-scale unification of light dark matter and neutrino mass
National Taiwan University（台湾大学）；National Center for Theoretical Sciences, National Taiwan University（台湾大学国家理论科学中心）；Academia Sinica（中央研究院）；Phenikaa Institute for Advanced Study, Phenikaa University（菲尼亚卡大学高级研究所）
Recent results from neutrino experiments show evidence for light sterile neutrinos which do not have any Standard Model interactions. In this work we study the hidden interaction of sterile neutrinos with an "MeV scale" gauge boson (the $ν_s$HI model) with mass $M_X$ and leptonic coupling $g^\prime_l$. By performing an analysis on the $ν_s$HI model using the data of the MINOS neutrino experiment we find that the values above $G_X/G_F=92.4$ are excluded by more than $2σ$ C.L., where $G_F$ is the Fermi constant and $G_X$ is the field strength of the $ν_s$HI model. Using this model we can also pr…
