Revised neutrino-gallium cross section and prospects of BEST in resolving the gallium anomaly

O(1)eV sterile neutrino can be responsible for a number of anomalous results of neutrino oscillation experiments. This hypothesis may be tested at short base line neutrino oscillation experiments, several of which are either ongoing or under construction. Here, we concentrate on the so-called galliu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. D 2018-04, Vol.97 (7), p.073001, Article 073001
Main Authors: Barinov, Vladislav, Cleveland, Bruce, Gavrin, Vladimir, Gorbunov, Dmitry, Ibragimova, Tatiana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bayesian analysis
Cross-sections
Experiments
Gallium
Neutrinos
Parameter sensitivity
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Summary:O(1)eV sterile neutrino can be responsible for a number of anomalous results of neutrino oscillation experiments. This hypothesis may be tested at short base line neutrino oscillation experiments, several of which are either ongoing or under construction. Here, we concentrate on the so-called gallium anomaly, found by SAGE and GALLEX experiments, and its foreseeable future tests with BEST experiment at Baksan Neutrino Observatory. We start with a revision of the neutrino-gallium cross section that is performed by utilizing the recent measurements of the nuclear final state spectra. We accordingly correct the parameters of gallium anomaly and refine the BEST prospects in testing it and searching for sterile neutrinos. We further evolve the previously proposed idea to investigate the anomaly with Zn65 artificial neutrino source as a next option available at BEST and estimate its sensitivity to the sterile neutrino model parameters following the Bayesian approach. We show that after the two stages of operation BEST will make 5σ discovery of the sterile neutrinos, if they are behind the gallium anomaly.
ISSN:2470-0010
2470-0029
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.97.073001