Technique for direct eV-scale measurements of the Mu and tau neutrino masses using supernova neutrinos

Early black hole formation in a core-collapse supernova will abruptly truncate the neutrino fluxes. The sharp cutoff can be used to make model-independent time-of-flight neutrino mass tests. Assuming a neutrino luminosity of 10(52) erg/s per flavor at cutoff and a distance of 10 kpc, Super-Kamiokande can detect an electron neutrino mass as small as 1.8 eV, and the proposed OMNIS detector can detect mu and tau neutrino masses as small as 6 eV. We present the first technique with direct sensitivity to eV-scale mu and tau neutrino masses.     

Neutrino-nucleus reaction in supernovae

Neutrino reactions play an important role at various stages of core-collapse supernova. During infall, neutrinos are produced by electron capture mainly on nuclei and contribute significantly to the cooling of the collapsing core. After core bounce the nascent neutron star cools by neutrino emission. It is a major goal to observe such neutrinos from a future supernova by earthbound detectors and to establish their spectra. Recently it has been shown that the spectrum of electron neutrinos from the early neutrino burst is significantly altered if inelastic neutrino-nucleus scattering is considered in supernova simulations. Finally spallation reactions induced by neutrinos when passing through the outer burning shells can produce certain nuclides in what is called neutrino nucleosynthesis.     

Tau neutrinos favored over sterile neutrinos in atmospheric muon neutrino oscillations

The previously published atmospheric neutrino data did not distinguish whether muon neutrinos were oscillating into tau neutrinos or sterile neutrinos, as both hypotheses fit the data. Using data recorded in 1100 live days of the Super-Kamiokande detector, we use three complementary data samples to study the difference in zenith angle distribution due to neutral currents and matter effects. We find no evidence favoring sterile neutrinos, and reject the hypothesis at the 99% confidence level. On the other hand, we find that oscillation between muon and tau neutrinos suffices to explain all the results in hand.     

On the possibility to determine neutrino mass hierarchy via supernova neutrinos with short-time characteristics

In this paper, we investigate whether it is possible to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy via a high-statistics and real-time observation of supernova neutrinos with short-time characteristics. The essential idea is to utilize distinct times-of-flight for different neutrino mass eigenstates from a core-collapse supernova to the Earth, which may significantly change the time distribution of neutrino events in the future huge water-Cherenkov and liquid-scintillator detectors. For illustration, we consider two different scenarios. The first case is the neutronization burst of emitted in the first tens of milliseconds of a core-collapse supernova, while the second case is the black hole formation during the accretion phase for which neutrino signals are expected to be abruptly terminated. In the latter scenario, it turns out only when the supernova is at a distance of a few Mpc and the fiducial mass of the detector is at the level of gigaton, might we be able to discriminate between normal and inverted neutrino mass hierarchies. In the former scenario, the probability for such a discrimination is even less due to a poor statistics.     

Cosmic-ray muon and atmospheric neutrino fluxes at very high energies

Estimates of cosmic-ray muon and atmospheric neutrino fluxes at TeV energies are obtained taking into account a “prompt” production of muons and neutrinos through charmed-particle decays and a “direct” lepton-pair production through the Drell-Yan mechanism and resonances. It is found that the contribution of charmed particles to the muon flux is equal to that from the conventional sources (pion and kaon decays) at 60 TeV, and the same equality can take place at 10 and 1 TeV for muon and electron neutrinos, respectively (for particles coming to sea level in the vertical direction). This “direct” production contribution to muon and neutrino fluxes is estimated very arbitrarily, but it cannot be excluded that this contribution is equal to that from the conventional source at energies of 0.5 and 0.05 PeV for muons and muon neutrinos, respectively. Currently, the estimates of the “prompt” and the “direct” contributions to cosmic-ray muons and atmospheric neutrinos are only qualitative. This is true especially for the “direct” contribution. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to attract attention to these potentially important sources of atmospheric muons and neutrinos.     

Detection of neutrinos from supernovae in nearby galaxies

While existing detectors would see a burst of many neutrinos from a Milky Way supernova, the supernova rate is only a few per century. As an alternative, we propose the detection of approximately 1 neutrino per supernova from galaxies within 10 Mpc, in which there were at least 9 core-collapse supernovae since 2002. With a future 1 Mton scale detector, this could be a faster method for measuring the supernova neutrino spectrum, which is essential for calibrating numerical models and predicting the redshifted diffuse spectrum from distant supernovae. It would also allow a > or approximately 10(4) times more precise trigger time than optical data alone for high-energy neutrinos and gravitational waves.     

Searches for the appearance of \nu_\tau using neutrino beams from muon storage rings

We study the possibilities offered by muon storage rings for appearance experiments in order to determine masses and mixing angles for the and oscillations. The dependence of tau event rates on baseline, forward peaking of decay neutrinos with increasing energies, and average fluxes intercepted by detectors of various sizes is discussed. It is found that the baseline length does not significantly affect the rates for oscillations of such magnitudes as are suggested by the current atmospheric neutrino data. Subsequently, the effects of cuts on hadronic and wrong sign leptonic modes are computed and used to plot 90% CL contours for the parameter regions that can be explored in such experiments. The results show that even for modest muon beam energies, convincing coverage and verification of the Super Kamiokande parameters is possible. In addition, a very significant enlargement of present day bounds on the mixing parameters for neutrino oscillations of all types is guaranteed by these types of searches. Received: 4 April 2000 / Revised version: 22 July 2000 / Published online: 8 December 2000     

Flavor evolution of the neutronization neutrino burst from an O-Ne-Mg core-collapse supernova

We present results of 3-neutrino flavor evolution simulations for the neutronization burst from an O-Ne-Mg core-collapse supernova. We find that nonlinear neutrino self-coupling engineers a single spectral feature of stepwise conversion in the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy case and in the normal mass hierarchy case, a superposition of two such features corresponding to the vacuum neutrino mass-squared differences associated with solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillations. These neutrino spectral features offer a unique potential probe of the conditions in the supernova environment and may allow us to distinguish between O-Ne-Mg and Fe core-collapse supernovae.     

Monochromatic neutrinos from the annihilation of fourth-generation massive stable neutrinos in the Sun and in the Earth

The accumulation of relic fourth-generation heavy neutrinos (of mass 50 GeV) in the Earth and the Sun, which is followed by their annihilation, is considered. The most conservative estimates of the fluxes of monochromatic electron, muon, and tau neutrinos and antineutrinos of energy 50 GeV from the annihilation of heavy neutrinos are 4.1×10^?6 cm^?2 s^?1 from Earth’s core and 1.1×10^?7 cm^?2 s^?1 from Sun’s core, whence it follows that an analysis of data from underground neutrino observatories may furnish additional information about the existence of fourth-generation neutrinos. It is shown that, because of kinetic equilibrium between the arrival of cosmic neutrinos and their annihilation, the existence of new U(1) gauge interaction of fourth-generation neutrinos has virtually no effect on the estimates of the annihilation fluxes of electron, muon, and tau neutrinos.     

Future e(+)e(-) colliders' sensitivity to Hbb coupling and CP violation

We perform a complete simulation of the process e(+)e(-)-->bbvv, where nu can be an electron, muon, or tau neutrino, in the context of a general Higgs coupling to b quarks. We parametrize the Hbb; coupling as (m(b)/v)(a+igamma(5)b). Taking into account interference effects between pure Higgs and Standard Model contributions, we find that sensitivities of the order of 2% and 20% can be obtained at a future e(+)e(-) collider for deviations of the a and b parameters, respectively, from their Standard Model values. Combining our analysis with an independent measurement of Gamma(H-->bb) can provide evidence about the CP nature of the Higgs sector.     

Search for CP violation in the lepton sector

One of the major open issues in neutrino physics is the possible existence of CP violation in the neutrino sector. Such an observation would have an important impact in various domains of physics, from high energy physics to cosmology. Its search requires future accelerator neutrino facilities producing intense and pure neutrino beams such as “beta-beams”. Here we review the different beta-beam scenarios proposed so far and discuss the present status, with a particular emphasis on the original baseline scenario and its feasibility. Alternative strategies for the CP violation search are to be pursued as well. A possibility is to search for CP violation effects in astrophysical environments. Here we present recent analytical and numerical results obtained in the context of core-collapse supernovae. In particular, we point out the conditions under which there can be CP violating effects in dense media and show numerical results on the supernova (anti-)neutrino fluxes and on the electron fraction, relevant for the r-process nucleosynthesis.     

Physics prospects of the Jinping neutrino experiment

The China Jinping Underground Laboratory(CJPL), which has the lowest cosmic-ray muon flux and the lowest reactor neutrino flux of any laboratory, is ideal to carry out low-energy neutrino experiments. With two detectors and a total fiducial mass of 2000 tons for solar neutrino physics(equivalently, 3000 tons for geo-neutrino and supernova neutrino physics), the Jinping neutrino experiment will have the potential to identify the neutrinos from the CNO fusion cycles of the Sun, to cover the transition phase for the solar neutrino oscillation from vacuum to matter mixing, and to measure the geo-neutrino flux, including the Th/U ratio. These goals can be fulfilled with mature existing techniques. Efforts on increasing the target mass with multi-modular neutrino detectors and on developing the slow liquid scintillator will increase the Jinping discovery potential in the study of solar neutrinos,geo-neutrinos, supernova neutrinos, and dark matter.     

Status of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

Solar neutrinos from the decay of ⁸B have been detected at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory via the charged-current (CC) and neutral-current (NC) reactions on deuterium and by the elastic scattering (ES) of electrons. The CCr eaction is sensitive exclusively to electron neutrinos, the NCr eaction is sensitive to all neutrino species, and the ES reaction also has a small sensitivity to muon and tau neutrinos. These measurements provided strong evidence that neutrinos change flavor as they propagate from the center of the Sun to the Earth at the 5.3σ level. It will also be shown that a global solar neutrino analysis of matter-enhanced neutrino oscillations of two active flavors strongly favors the large mixing angle solution.     

中微子振荡实验——超出标准模型的实验检验（Ⅰ）

文章总结了中微子振荡实验在历史和现状,介绍了几个太阳中微子丢失实验的结果和几个大气μ中微子丢失实验结果,这些结果表明存在中微子振荡,即中微子具有质量,它是超出标准模型的信号,文章还介绍了21世纪初研究中微子振荡和若干重要实验,噬基线中微子振荡实验以及建造μ子贮存环来产生高能电子中微子束进行中微子振荡的实验以及测量中微子振荡时的CP破坏的设想。     

Some constraints on the Yukawa parameters in the neutrino modification of the Standard Model (ν<Emphasis Type="Italic">MSM</Emphasis>) and CP-violation

The equations connecting elements of the Yukawa matrix to elements of the active neutrino mass matrix in the νMSM theory (an extension of the Standard Model by a singlet of three right-handed neutrinos) was analyzed, and explicit relations for the ratio of the Yukawa matrix elements and elements of the active neutrino mass matrix were obtained. This relation can be used for getting more accurate constraints on the model parameters. Particularly, with the help of the obtained results we investigated CP-violating phase in the νMSM theory. We demonstrate that even in the case when elements of the active neutrino mass matrix are real the baryon asymmetry can be generated also.     

Heavy neutrinos and lepton number violation in ?p colliders

We discuss the prospects of studying lepton number violating processes in order to identify Majorana neutrinos from low scale seesaw mechanisms at lepton-proton colliders. In particular, we consider the scenarios of colliding electrons with LHC energy protons and, motivated by the efforts towards the construction of a muon collider, the prospects of muon-proton collisions. We find that present constraints on the mixing of the Majorana neutrinos still allow for a detectable signal at these kind of facilities given the smallness of the Standard Model background. We discuss possible cuts in order to further increase the signal over background ratio and the prospects of reconstructing the neutrino mass from the kinematics of the final state particles.     

Parametrization of seesaw models and light sterile neutrinos

The recent recomputation of the neutrino fluxes from nuclear reactors relaxes the tension between the LSND and MiniBooNE anomalies and disappearance data when interpreted in terms of sterile neutrino oscillations. The simplest extension of the Standard Model with such fermion singlets is the addition of right-handed sterile neutrinos with small Majorana masses. Even when introducing three right-handed neutrinos, this scenario has less free parameters than the 3 + 2 scenarios studied in the literature. This begs the question whether the best fit regions obtained can be reproduced by this simplest extension of the Standard Model. In order to address this question, we devise an exact parametrization of Standard Model extensions with right-handed neutrinos. Apart from the usual 3×3 neutrino mixing matrix and the 3 masses of the lightest neutrinos, the extra degrees of freedom are encoded in another 3×3 unitary matrix and 3 additional mixing angles. The parametrization includes all the correlations among masses and mixings and is valid beyond the usual seesaw approximation. Through this parametrization we find that the best fit regions for the LSND and MiniBooNE anomalies in a 3 + 2 scenario can indeed be reproduced despite the smaller number of degrees of freedom.     

Prospects of the search for neutrino bursts from supernovae with Baksan large volume scintillation detector

Observing a high-statistics neutrino signal from the supernova explosions in the Galaxy is a major goal of low-energy neutrino astronomy. The prospects for detecting all flavors of neutrinos and antineutrinos from the core-collapse supernova (ccSN) in operating and forthcoming large liquid scintillation detectors (LLSD) are widely discussed now. One of proposed LLSD is Baksan Large Volume Scintillation Detector (BLVSD). This detector will be installed at the Baksan Neutrino Observatory (BNO) of the Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, at a depth of 4800 m.w.e. Low-energy neutrino astronomy is one of the main lines of research of the BLVSD.     

Resonant tau leptogenesis with observable lepton number violation

We consider a minimal extension of the standard model with one singlet neutrino per generation that can realize resonant leptogenesis at the electroweak scale. In particular, the baryon asymmetry in the Universe can be created by lepton-to-baryon conversion of an individual lepton number, for example, that of the tau lepton. The current neutrino data can be explained by a simple CP-violating Yukawa texture. The model has several testable phenomenological implications. It contains heavy Majorana neutrinos at the electroweak scale, which can be probed at e+ e- linear colliders, and predicts e- and mu-lepton-number-violating processes, such as 0nu betabeta decay, mu --> e gamma, and mu-e conversion in nuclei, with rates that are within reach of experimental sensitivity.