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  • Open Access

Probing new physics scenarios using high energy events at the NOvA far detector

Chinmay Bera* and K. N. Deepthi†

  • *Contact author: chinmay20pphy014@mahindrauniversity.edu.in
  • †Contact author: nagadeepthi.kuchibhatla@mahindrauniversity.edu.in

Phys. Rev. D 112, 115001 – Published 1 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/qg2k-md3c

Abstract

NuMI Off-axis νe Appearance (NOvA) experiment is an ongoing long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. The primary channels of interest are the νe, ν¯e appearance, νμ, ν¯μ disappearance channels analyzed in the energy window 1<Eν<4  GeV. However, NOvA far detector sees nontrivial high-energy νe, ν¯e events in the energy range 4<Eν<20  GeV. These high-energy events provide us with an opportunity to investigate the subleading new physics scenarios. In this context, we study the sensitivity of the NOvA experiment to constrain the nonstandard interaction (NSI) parameters and environmental decoherence parameters. We observe that by including high energy events (signal+background) the degeneracy around εeτ∼1.6 can be removed throughout the δCP and δeτ range. Further, we examine the role of signal versus beam background events in removing this degeneracy. In addition, we constrain the decoherence parameter Γ considering events from 1<Eν<20  GeV. Later, assuming the presence of decoherence in nature we obtain the allowed regions in θ23 and δCP plane.

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