Experimental bounds on the neutrino lifetime depend on the nature of the neutrinos and the details of the potentially new physics responsible for neutrino decay. In the case where the decays involve active neutrinos in the final state, the neutrino masses also qualitatively impact how these manifest themselves experimentally. In order to further understand the impact of nonzero neutrino masses, we explore how observations of solar neutrinos constrain a very simple toy model. We assume that neutrinos are Dirac fermions and there is a new massless scalar that couples to neutrinos such that a heavy neutrino— with mass —can decay into a lighter neutrino— with mass —and a massless scalar. We find that the constraints on the new physics coupling depend, sometimes significantly, on the ratio of the daughter-to-parent neutrino masses and that, for large-enough values of the new physics coupling, the “dark side” of the solar neutrino parameter space— —provides a reasonable fit to solar neutrino data, if only or neutrino data alone are considered, but no allowed region is found in the combined analysis. Our results generalize to other neutrino-decay scenarios, including those that mediate when the neutrino mass ordering is inverted mass and , the mass of . Published by the American Physical Society2024
more »
« less
First Measurement of νe and νμ Interaction Cross Sections at the LHC with FASER’s Emulsion Detector
The first results of the study of high-energy electron neutrino ( ) and muon neutrino ( ) charged-current interactions in the emulsion-tungsten detector of the FASER experiment at the LHC are presented. A 128.8 kg subset of the volume was analyzed after exposure to of data. Four (eight) ( ) interaction candidate events are observed with a statistical significance of ( ). This is the first direct observation of interactions at a particle collider and includes the highest-energy and ever detected from an artificial source. The interaction cross section per nucleon is measured over an energy range of 560–1740 GeV (520–1760 GeV) for ( ) to be [ ], consistent with standard model predictions. These are the first measurements of neutrino interaction cross sections in those energy ranges. Published by the American Physical Society2024
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10522832
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Physical Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review Letters
- Volume:
- 133
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0031-9007
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
The inclusive production of the charm-strange baryon is measured for the first time via its semileptonic decay into at midrapidity ( ) in proton-proton (pp) collisions at the center-of-mass energy with the ALICE detector at the LHC. The transverse momentum ( ) differential cross section multiplied by the branching ratio is presented in the interval . The branching-fraction ratio is measured to be (stat) (syst). Comparisons with other experimental measurements, as well as with theoretical calculations, are presented. © 2024 CERN, for the ALICE Collaboration2024CERNmore » « less
-
In the bottomonium sector, the hindered magnetic dipole transitions between P-wave states , , 1, 2, are expected to be severely suppressed according to the relativized quark model, due to the spin flip of the quark. Nevertheless, a recent model following the coupled-channel approach predicts the corresponding branching fractions to be enhanced by orders of magnitude. In this Letter, we report the first search for such transitions. We find no significant signals and set upper limits at 90% confidence level on the corresponding branching fractions: , and . These values help to constrain the parameters of the coupled-channel models. The results are obtained using a data sample taken around with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy collider. Published by the American Physical Society2025more » « less
-
We measure the complete set of angular coefficients for exclusive decays ( , ). Our analysis uses the full Belle dataset with hadronic tag-side reconstruction. The results allow us to extract the form factors describing the transition and the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element . Using recent lattice QCD calculations for the hadronic form factors, we find using the Boyd-Grinstein-Lebed parametrization, compatible with determinations from inclusive semileptonic decays. We search for lepton flavor universality violation as a function of the hadronic recoil parameter and investigate the differences of the electron and muon angular distributions. We find no deviation from standard model expectations. Published by the American Physical Society2024more » « less
-
Double- and single-differential cross sections for inclusive charged-current -nucleus scattering are reported for the kinematic domain 0 to in three-momentum transfer and 0 to 2 GeV in available energy, at a mean energy of 1.86 GeV. The measurements are based on an estimated 995,760 charged-current (CC) interactions in the scintillator medium of the NOvA Near Detector. The subdomain populated by 2-particle-2-hole (2p2h) reactions is identified by the cross section excess relative to predictions for -nucleus scattering that are constrained by a data control sample. Models for 2-particle-2-hole processes are rated by comparisons of the predicted-versus-measured CC inclusive cross section over the full phase space and in the restricted subdomain. Shortfalls are observed in neutrino generator predictions obtained using the theory-based València and SuSAv2 2p2h models. Published by the American Physical Society2025more » « less
An official website of the United States government

