Abstract
We study the impact of one light sterile neutrino on the prospective data expected to come from the two presently running long-baseline experiments T2K and NOvA when they will accumulate their full planned exposure. Introducing for the first time, the bi-probability representation in the 4-flavor framework, commonly used in the 3-flavor scenario, we present a detailed discussion of the behavior of the v μ → v e and \( {\overline{v}}_{\mu}\to {\overline{v}}_e \) transition probabilities in the 3+1 scheme. We also perform a detailed sensitivity study of these two experiments (both in the stand-alone and combined modes) to assess their discovery reach in the presence of a light sterile neutrino. For realistic benchmark values of the mass-mixing parameters (as inferred from the existing global short-baseline fits), we find that the performance of both these experiments in claiming the discovery of the CP-violation induced by the standard CP-phase \( \delta \) 13 = \( \delta \) and the neutrino mass hierarchy get substantially deteriorated. The exact loss of sensitivity depends on the value of the unknown CP-phase \( \delta \) 14. Finally, we estimate the discovery potential of total CP-violation (i.e., induced simultaneously by the two CP-phases \( \delta \) 13 and \( \delta \) 14), and the capability of the two experiments of reconstructing the true values of such CP-phases. The typical (1\( \sigma \) level) uncertainties on the reconstructed phases are approximately 400 for \( \delta \) 13 and 500 for \( \delta \) 14.
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Agarwalla, S.K., Chatterjee, S.S., Dasgupta, A. et al. Discovery potential of T2K and NOvA in the presence of a light sterile neutrino. J. High Energ. Phys. 2016, 111 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2016)111
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2016)111