We present a novel framework that provides an explanation to the long-standing excess of electron-like events in the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab. We suggest a new dark sector containing a dark neutrino and a dark gauge boson, both with masses between a few tens and a few hundreds of MeV. Dark neutrinos are produced via neutrino-nucleus scattering, followed by their decay to the dark gauge boson, which in turn gives rise to electron-like events. This mechanism provides an excellent fit to MiniBooNE energy spectra and angular distributions.
@article{arxiv.1807.09877,
title = {Dark Neutrino Portal to Explain MiniBooNE excess},
author = {Enrico Bertuzzo and Sudip Jana and Pedro A. N. Machado and Renata Zukanovich Funchal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.09877},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures, discussion on constraints expanded, corrected figure and benchmark point updated, matches PRL version