English

Atmospheric, long baseline, and reactor neutrino data constraints on $\theta_{13}$

Nuclear Theory 2009-08-20 v4 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

A new atmospheric neutrino oscillation tool which utilizes full three neutrino oscillation probabilities and a full three neutrino treatment of the MSW effect is combined with a standard analysis of the K2K, MINOS, and CHOOZ data to examine the bounds on θ13\theta_{13} implied by existing data, including the recent, more finely binned, Super-K atmospheric data. In the region L/Eν104L/E_\nu\gtrsim 10^4 km/GeV, we have previously found that the sub-dominant expansion does not converge and that terms linear in θ13\theta_{13} can be significant. The current analysis confirms this and leads to the conclusion that θ13\theta_{13} is bounded from above by the atmospheric data while CHOOZ provides the lower bound. We trace the origin of this result to fully contained data in the previously mentioned very long baseline region, to a combination of a quadratic in θ13\theta_{13} term in Pee{\mathcal P}_{ee} and a linear term in Peμ{\mathcal P}_{e\mu} and their contribution to ReR_e, a broad MSW resonance for the solar mass-squared difference at 180 MeV, and an increase in θ12\theta_{12} due to this resonant matter effect which alters the sign of the linear in θ13\theta_{13} term. Assuming CP is conserved in the lepton sector, we find θ13=0.070.11+0.18\theta_{13}=-0.07^{+0.18}_{-0.11}, the asymmetry being a reflection of the importance of the linear in θ13\theta_{13} terms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0805.2924,
  title  = {Atmospheric, long baseline, and reactor neutrino data constraints on $\theta_{13}$},
  author = {J. E. Roa and D. C. Latimer and D. J. Ernst},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0805.2924},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 5 figures, typos corrected, manuscript shortened