Sensitivities of Long and Medium Baseline Experiments to Sterile Neutrinos and Non-Standard Interactions
Abstract
In this work, we present for the first time, the simultaneous analysis of the non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) and a light sterile neutrino in the 3+1 framework for the future long- and medium-baseline experiments DUNE and MOMENT, respectively. We show that treating the two sectors separately yields over optimistic sensitivities. The simultaneous presence of sterile-neutrino mixing and complex NSI weakens the |εeμ| sensitivity by a factor of ∼ (2−3) with the dominant degradation associated with the additional parameter freedom in the flavor-changing NSI sector. DUNE alone fails to achieve 5σ CP-violation discovery, once NSI phases are marginalized over. The DUNE+MOMENT combination recovers >5σ sensitivity over a wide range of δCP space, constrains sin2θ24≲10−2 and |εeμ|≲0.025 at 95%~C.L., and resolves degeneracies that are intractable for either experiment alone. Our results establish that a multi-baseline strategy combining matter-rich and near-vacuum baselines is necessary for robust parameter extraction in the simultaneous presence of two new physics scenarios. It is also important to perform simultaneous new physics analyses to reliably interpret future precision neutrino oscillation data.
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BibTeX
@misc{pusty2026sensitivities,
title = {{Sensitivities of Long and Medium Baseline Experiments to Sterile Neutrinos and Non-Standard Interactions}},
author = {Sambit Kumar Pusty and Trisha Guin and Rukmani Mohanta},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.36696},
eprint = {2609.36696},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36696},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Sensitivities of Long and Medium Baseline Experiments to Sterile Neutrinos and Non-Standard Interactions
AU - Sambit Kumar Pusty
AU - Trisha Guin
AU - Rukmani Mohanta
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.36696
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36696
AB - In this work, we present for the first time, the simultaneous analysis of the non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) and a light sterile neutrino in the 3+1 framework for the future long- and medium-baseline experiments DUNE and MOMENT, respectively. We show that treating the two sectors separately yields over optimistic sensitivities. The simultaneous presence of sterile-neutrino mixing and complex NSI weakens the |ε_eμ| sensitivity by a factor of ∼ (2−3) with the dominant degradation associated with the additional parameter freedom in the flavor-changing NSI sector. DUNE alone fails to achieve 5σ CP-violation discovery, once NSI phases are marginalized over. The DUNE+MOMENT combination recovers >5σ sensitivity over a wide range of δ_CP space, constrains sin^2θ_24≲10^−2 and |ε_eμ|≲0.025 at 95%~C.L., and resolves degeneracies that are intractable for either experiment alone. Our results establish that a multi-baseline strategy combining matter-rich and near-vacuum baselines is necessary for robust parameter extraction in the simultaneous presence of two new physics scenarios. It is also important to perform simultaneous new physics analyses to reliably interpret future precision neutrino oscillation data.
ER -