Testing the Pseudo-Dirac Nature of Atmospheric Neutrinos
Abstract
Pseudo-Dirac neutrinos are characterized by extremely small mass-squared differences between two nearly degenerate, strongly-mixed, active-sterile states. These differences are associated with new very-long oscillation lengths and provide a probe of the nature of neutrinos. Atmospheric neutrinos can probe these oscillations as they allow access to a broad range of baseline distances, from tens of kilometers to the Earth's diameter. We investigate the sensitivity of an experiment like the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) to the pseudo-Dirac nature of neutrinos through measurements of the atmospheric neutrino flux. We concentrate on the modifications to the atmospheric neutrino energy and angular spectra induced by one new oscillation frequency associated with the ν3 state and determine the parameter space that can be probed with atmospheric neutrinos at a DUNE-like detector. We also comment on the sensitivity of these measurements to the sub-leading "solar" oscillations, which are also characterized by a relatively small mass-squared difference.
Related
- XENONnT pp-Dominated Solar Neutrinos Constrain the ν1 Pseudo-Dirac Splitting
- Quantum field theory treatment of the spin-flavor precession of Dirac neutrinos with diagonal magnetic moments
- Low-Scale See-Saw Mechanism and the Majorana Nature of Heavy Neutrinos
- Heavy Pseudo-Dirac Doublet Dark Matter and Non-Thermal Leptogenesis in Light of the LZ Event
- Dirac-Phase CP-Violation in the Low-Scale Type-I Seesaw with Three Right-Handed Neutrinos
BibTeX
@misc{bitter2026testing,
title = {{Testing the Pseudo-Dirac Nature of Atmospheric Neutrinos}},
author = {Olivia M. Bitter and André de Gouvêa and Srubabati Goswami and Supriya Pan},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.07281},
eprint = {2611.07281},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07281},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Testing the Pseudo-Dirac Nature of Atmospheric Neutrinos
AU - Olivia M. Bitter
AU - André de Gouvêa
AU - Srubabati Goswami
AU - Supriya Pan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.07281
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07281
AB - Pseudo-Dirac neutrinos are characterized by extremely small mass-squared differences between two nearly degenerate, strongly-mixed, active-sterile states. These differences are associated with new very-long oscillation lengths and provide a probe of the nature of neutrinos. Atmospheric neutrinos can probe these oscillations as they allow access to a broad range of baseline distances, from tens of kilometers to the Earth's diameter. We investigate the sensitivity of an experiment like the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) to the pseudo-Dirac nature of neutrinos through measurements of the atmospheric neutrino flux. We concentrate on the modifications to the atmospheric neutrino energy and angular spectra induced by one new oscillation frequency associated with the ν_3 state and determine the parameter space that can be probed with atmospheric neutrinos at a DUNE-like detector. We also comment on the sensitivity of these measurements to the sub-leading "solar" oscillations, which are also characterized by a relatively small mass-squared difference.
ER -