1305.4350 (Amir N. Khan et al.)

Sensitivity of medium-baseline reactor neutrino mass-hierarchy
experiments to nonstandard interactions    [PDF]

Amir N. Khan, Douglas W. McKay

We explore the impact of nonstandard interactions at source and detector on the interpretation of reactor electron neutrino disappearance experiments with short and medium baseline designs. We use the constraints from the recent results from short baseline experiments and generalize current estimates of medium baseline event rates to include charged current interactions at source and detector with standard Lorentz structure but with non-standard flavor structure. We find that the average spectrum of observed events at a baseline of 50 km, in the middle of the currently favored region, provides a robust probe of new interactions. We show that an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity to nonstandard interactions is possible. We point out a potentially serious ambiguity in interpretation of medium baseline data. We show that nonstandard interactions can enhance or suppress the sensitivity of experiments to the mass hierarchy, depending on the phases of the parameters and the CP-violating phase in the standard three-neutrino mixing picture.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4350