A panorama of new-physics explanations to the MiniBooNE excess

Author:

Asli M. Abdullahi, Jaime Hoefken Zink, Matheus Hostert, Daniele Massaro, Silvia Pascoli

Keyword:

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph), High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)

journal:

IRMP-CP3-23-41

date:

2023-07-31 16:00:00

Abstract

The MiniBooNE low-energy excess stands as an unexplained anomaly in short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. It has been shown that it can be explained in the context of dark sector models. Here, we provide an overview of the possible new-physics solutions based on electron, photon, and dilepton final states. We systematically discuss the various production mechanisms for dark particles in neutrino-nucleus scattering. Our main result is a comprehensive fit to the MiniBooNE energy spectrum in the parameter space of dark neutrino models, where short-lived heavy neutral leptons are produced in neutrino interactions and decay to $e^+e^-$ pairs inside the detector. For the first time, other experiments will be able to directly confirm or rule out dark neutrino interpretations of the MiniBooNE low-energy excess.

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