Modern neutrino detectors, particularly the large liquid argon time projection chambers (LAr TPCs) at SBN and DUNE, provide an unprecedented amount of information about GeV-scale interactions. By taking advantage of the excellent spatial and calorimetric resolution as well as the low tracking thresholds provided by LAr TPCs, we present a novel method of estimating the neutrino energy in neutral current interactions. This method has potential implications for the search for a sterile neutrino; it allows for the potential observation of spectral distortions due to sterile neutrino-induced oscillations in the neutral current neutrino energy spectrum. As an example, we use this method to perform an analysis of the statistics-only sensitivity to sterile neutrinos in the neutral current channel at SBN under a 3+1 model.
@article{arxiv.2012.09788,
title = {Neutrino Energy Estimation in Neutral Current Interactions and Prospects for Sterile Neutrino Searches},
author = {Andrew P. Furmanski and Christopher Hilgenberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.09788},
year = {2021}
}