Broad Sterile Neutrinos & the Reactor/Gallium Tension
Abstract
Significant evidence exists for the apparent disappearance of electron-type neutrinos in radioactive source experiments. Yet, interpreted within the standard `3+1 sterile neutrino scenario', precision short-baseline measurements of electron antineutrinos from nuclear reactors strongly disagree with these results. Recently, it has been demonstrated that allowing for a finite wavepacket size for the reactor neutrinos can ameliorate such a tension, however the smallness of the required wavepackets is a subject of intense debate. In this work, we demonstrate that a `broad' sterile neutrino may relax this tension in much the same way. Such a phenomenological possibility can arise in plausible hidden sector scenarios, such as a clockwork-style sector, for which we provide a concrete microscopic model.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2311.06352,
title = {Broad Sterile Neutrinos & the Reactor/Gallium Tension},
author = {Hannah Banks and Kevin J. Kelly and Matthew McCullough and Tao Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.06352},
year = {2023}
}