A new analysis of the MiniBooNE low-energy excess
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Springer
Received: September Revised: October Accepted: October Published: November
18, 19, 19, 26,
2020 2020 2020 2020
A new analysis of the MiniBooNE low-energy excess
a
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Torino, Via P. Giuria 1, I–10125 Torino, Italy b CERN, Theory Division, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland c Yerevan Physics Institute, Alikhanian Brothers 2, Yerevan-36, Armenia d Institute for Theoretical Physics and Modeling, Yerevan-36, Armenia e Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Milano, I–20133 Milano, Italy
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract: We present the results of a new analysis of the data of the MiniBooNE experiment taking into account the additional background of photons from ∆+/0 decay proposed in ref. [1] and additional contributions due to coherent photon emission, incoherent production of higher mass resonances, and incoherent non-resonant nucleon production. We show that the new background can explain part of the MiniBooNE low-energy excess and the statistical significance of the MiniBooNE indication in favor of short-baseline neutrino oscillation decreases from 5.1σ to 3.6σ. We also consider the implications for short-baseline neutrino oscillations in the 3+1 active-sterile neutrino mixing framework. We show that the new analysis of the MiniBooNE data indicates smaller active-sterile neutrino mixing and may lead us towards a solution of the appearance-disappearance tension in the global fit of short-baseline neutrino oscillation data. Keywords: Beyond Standard Model, Neutrino Physics ArXiv ePrint: 1912.01524
c The Authors. Open Access, Article funded by SCOAP3 .
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP11(2020)146
JHEP11(2020)146
C. Giunti,a A. Ioannisianb,c,d and G. Ranuccie
Contents 1
2 The MiniBooNE single-γ background
1
3 Short-baseline neutrino oscillations
5
4 Conclusions
9
1
Introduction
The MiniBooNE experiment [2] found a significant excess of low-energy νe -like events that could be due to short-baseline νµ → νe oscillations generated by active-sterile neutrino mixing [3–5] or to other physics beyond the Standard Model [6–9]. However, the oscillation explanation of the MiniBooNE low-energy excess is in tension with the data of other shortbaseline neutrino oscillation experiments [10–12] and the non-oscillatory explanations are disfavored by other measurements [13]. A possible solution of this conundrum lies in a reevaluation of the estimated background that can decrease the low-energy excess. Among the different sources of background an important one is the single-γ background that cannot be distinguished from νe -like events in the MiniBooNE detector. The MiniBooNE single-γ background was studied theoretically in ref. [14], where it was found that it is a factor of about 2 larger than that estimated by the MiniBooNE collaboration. On the other hand, the later theoretical studies in refs. [15, 16] found an approximate agreement with the MiniBooNE estimate. However, doubts on
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