English

Status of Light Sterile Neutrino Searches

High Energy Physics - Experiment 2019-11-06 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Instrumentation and Detectors

Abstract

A number of anomalous results in short-baseline oscillation may hint at the existence of one or more light sterile neutrino states in the eV mass range and have triggered a wave of new experimental efforts to search for a definite signature of oscillations between active and sterile neutrino states. The present paper aims to provide a comprehensive review on the status of light sterile neutrino searches in mid-2019: we discuss not only the basic experimental approaches and sensitivities of reactor, source, atmospheric, and accelerator neutrino oscillation experiments but also the complementary bounds arising from direct neutrino mass experiments and cosmological observations. Moreover, we review current results from global oscillation analyses that include the constraints set by running reactor and atmospheric neutrino experiments. They permit to set tighter bounds on the active-sterile oscillation parameters but as yet are not able to provide a definite conclusion on the existence of eV-scale sterile neutrinos.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1906.01739,
  title  = {Status of Light Sterile Neutrino Searches},
  author = {Sebastian Böser and Christian Buck and Carlo Giunti and Julien Lesgourgues and Livia Ludhova and Susanne Mertens and Anne Schukraft and Michael Wurm},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.01739},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

80 pages, 35 figures, accepted for publication by PPNP