Abstract
We use atmospheric neutrino data and MINOS data to constrain the MaVaN (mass varying neutrinos) mechanism. The MaVaN model was largely studied in cosmology scenarios and comes from the coupling of the neutrinos with a neutral scalar depending on the local matter density. For atmospheric neutrinos, this new interaction affects the neutrino propagation inside the Earth, and as consequence, induces modifications in their oscillation pattern. To perform such test for a nonstandard oscillation mechanism with a nondiagonal neutrino coupling in the mass basis, we analyze the angular distribution of atmospheric neutrino events as seen by the Super-Kamiokande experiment for the events in the sub-GeV and multi-GeV range and muon neutrinos (antineutrinos) in the MINOS experiment. From the combined analysis of these two sets of data we obtain the best fit for , and MaVaN parameter with modest improvement, , over the standard oscillation scenario. The combination of MINOS data and Super-Kamiokande data prefers small values of MaVaN parameter at 90% C. L.
2 More- Received 2 June 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.90.013011
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