U(1)' mediated decays of heavy sterile neutrinos in MiniBooNE
| Autor: | Ballett, Peter, Pascoli, Silvia, Ross-Lonergan, Mark |
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| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Phys. Rev. D 99, 071701 (2019) |
| Druh dokumentu: | Working Paper |
| DOI: | 10.1103/PhysRevD.99.071701 |
| Popis: | The MiniBooNE low-energy excess is a longstanding problem which has received further confirmation recently with a reanalysis using newly collected data, with the anomaly now at the $4.8\sigma$ level. In this letter we propose a novel explanation which advocates a low-energy sector containing $Z^\prime$ bosons with GeV-scale masses and sterile neutrinos with masses around $100$-$500$ MeV. We show that this scenario can provide an excellent spectral agreement with the MiniBooNE low-energy excess in the form of $Z^\prime$-mediated neutral current production of heavy sterile states, a fraction of whose subsequent decay to $e^+e^-$ pairs are misidentified as single electron-like electromagnetic showers. Our model inscribes itself in the broad class of models in which sterile neutrinos are charged under novel interactions, allowing new couplings to hidden-sector physics. Alongside the electron-like MiniBooNE signature this model also predicts a novel, low-background, signal in LArTPC detectors such as MicroBooNE consisting of two distinguishable electron-like electromagnetic showers originating from a single vertex with no associated hadronic activity. Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures |
| Databáze: | arXiv |
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