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Toward a Robust Confirmation or Refutation of the Sterile-Neutrino Explanation of Short-Baseline Anomalies

Ohana Benevides Rodrigues1,*, Matheus Hostert2,†, Kevin J. Kelly3,‡, Bryce Littlejohn1,§, Pedro A. N. Machado4,∥, Ibrahim Safa5,¶, and Tao Zhou3,**

  • 1Department of Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois 60616, USA
  • 2Department of Physics and Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA
  • 4Theoretical Physics Department, Fermilab, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, Illinois 60510, USA
  • 5Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA

  • *Contact author: obenevidesrodrigues@iit.edu
  • †Contact author: mhostert@g.harvard.edu
  • ‡Contact author: kjkelly@tamu.edu
  • §Contact author: blittlej@iit.edu
  • ∥Contact author: pmachado@fnal.gov
  • Contact author: isafa94@gmail.com
  • **Contact author: taozhou@tamu.edu
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 081801 – Published 19 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/4fn7-svnh

Abstract

The sterile neutrino interpretation of the LSND and MiniBooNE neutrino anomalies is currently being tested at three liquid argon detectors: MicroBooNE, SBND, and ICARUS. It has been argued that a degeneracy between νμ→νe and νe→νe oscillations significantly degrades their sensitivity to sterile neutrinos. Through an independent study, we show two methods to eliminate this concern. First, we resolve this degeneracy by including external constraints on νe disappearance from the PROSPECT reactor experiment. Second, by properly analyzing the full three-dimensional parameter space, we demonstrate that the stronger-than-sensitivity exclusion from MicroBooNE alone already covers the entire 2σ preferred regions of MiniBooNE at the level of 2−3σ. We show that upcoming searches at SBND and ICARUS can improve on this beyond the 4σ level, thereby providing a rigorous test of short-baseline anomalies.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 081801– Published 19 August, 2025
  • Received 25 March 2025
  • Accepted 1 August 2025
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