DUNE prospects in the search for sterile neutrinos

Experiments measuring the parameters of active neutrino oscillations can also search for the sterile neutrinos in part of the sterile neutrino parameter space. We analyze the prospects for the sterile neutrino search in the upcoming experiment DUNE for the sterile neutrinos with masses at GeV scale. As the experiment relies on the still-undecided design of the Near Detector, we provide the expected number of sterile neutrino decays in the Near Detector volume. Our most optimistic predictions show that the corresponding limit on mixing can be approximately of the same order as the previous estimates made for the LBNE project. We present our results as separate plots for the sterile neutrino mixing with electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. Generally, DUNE has good prospects for probing a large region of a previously unavailable part of the parameter space before new projects (like the SHiP one) join the search.

Figure 1

Schematic illustration of the detector geometry.

Figure 2

The number of expected sterile neutrino decays in the detector volume in the plane $M_N-|U{|}^2$ for the case of mixing with the electron neutrino. The LBNE (steel blue) line is a previous sensitivity estimate [23]. The red line is our estimate for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=6.4\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=3$, the blue line is for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=1.0\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=3$, and the green line is for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=6.4\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=300$.

Figure 3

The number of expected sterile neutrino decays in the detector volume in the plane $M_N-|U{|}^2$ for the case of mixing with the muon neutrino. The LBNE (steel blue) line is a previous sensitivity estimate [23]. The red line is our estimate for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=6.4\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=3$, the blue line is for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=1.0\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=3$, and the green line is for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=6.4\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=300$.

Figure 4

The number of expected sterile neutrino decays in the detector volume in the plane $M_N-|U{|}^2$ for the case of mixing with the tauon neutrino. The red line is our estimate for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=6.4\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=3$, the blue line is for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=1.0\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=3$, and the green line is for $\mathrm{\Delta }l=6.4\mathrm{m}$ and $N_{\text{detector}}=300$. The small feature at $M_N=1.63\mathrm{GeV}$ is due to the disappearance of the channel $\tau \to \pi N$, which is dominating up to that point.

Figure 5

Neutrino fluxes adopted from Ref. [18] (the black, blue, red, and violet lines) for the neutrino mode, generated with a 120 GeV primary proton beam and our corresponding estimate without the horns (steel blue and green lines).

Figure 6

Neutrino fluxes adopted from Ref. [18] (the black, blue, red, and violet lines) for the antineutrino mode, generated with a 120 GeV primary proton beam and our corresponding estimate without the horns (steel blue and green lines).