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Effects of the matter potential at one-loop level on neutrino oscillations in long-baseline experiments

Jihong Huang1,2,*, Tommy Ohlsson3,4,†, Sampsa Vihonen3,4,‡, and Shun Zhou1,2,§

  • *Contact author: huangjh@ihep.ac.cn
  • †Contact author: tohlsson@kth.se
  • ‡Contact author: vihonen@kth.se
  • §Contact author: zhoush@ihep.ac.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 111, 116024 – Published 27 June, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/b5h5-5gkc

Abstract

In this work, we investigate in a quantitative way how much radiative corrections to the matter potential for neutrino oscillations can impact the sensitivity to neutrino mass ordering in long-baseline accelerator experiments. Using numerical simulations for the future experiment DUNE, we find that the statistical significance for excluding the incorrect mass ordering can be enhanced by about 0.4σ if a one-loop correction of 2.0%—based on the Fermi coupling constant Gμ derived from measurements of muon lifetime—is included. The radiative corrections at one-loop level lead to resolving the neutrino mass ordering at 5σ confidence level 4–9 days earlier than at tree level. In contrast, the sensitivity to leptonic CP violation in DUNE is essentially unchanged. Finally, we emphasize that one-loop corrections should be incorporated into analyses of future neutrino oscillation data in a consistent and systematic manner.

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Phys. Rev. D 111, 116024– Published 27 June, 2025
  • Received 29 April 2025
  • Accepted 2 June 2025
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