27 research outputs found
Flavor Ratios of Astrophysical Neutrinos: Implications for Precision Measurements
We discuss flavor-mixing probabilities and flavor ratios of high energy
astrophysical neutrinos. In the first part of this paper, we expand the
neutrino flavor-fluxes in terms of the small parameters U_{e3} and pi/4 -
theta_{23}, and show that there are universal first and second order
corrections. The second order term can exceed the first order term, and so
should be included in any analytic study. We also investigate the probabilities
and ratios after a further expansion around the tribimaximal value of sin^2
theta_{12} = 1/3. In the second part of the paper, we discuss implications of
deviations of initial flavor ratios from the usually assumed, idealized flavor
compositions for pion, muon-damped, and neutron beam sources, viz., (1 : 2 :
0), (0 : 1 : 0), and (1 : 0 : 0), respectively. We show that even small
deviations have significant consequences for the observed flavor ratios at
Earth. If initial flavor deviations are not taken into account in analyses,
then false inferences for the values in the PMNS matrix elements (angles and
phase) may result.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures. Minor changes, matches version in JHE
Three-flavor solar neutrino oscillations with terrestrial neutrino constraints
We present an updated analysis of the current solar neutrino data in terms of
three-flavor oscillations, including the additional constraints coming from
terrestrial neutrino oscillation searches at the CHOOZ (reactor),
Super-Kamiokande (atmospheric), and KEK-to-Kamioka (accelerator) experiments.
The best fit is reached for the subcase of two-family mixing, and the
additional admixture with the third neutrino is severely limited. We discuss
the relevant features of the globally allowed regions in the oscillation
parameter space, as well as their impact on the amplitude of possible
CP-violation effects at future accelerator experiments and on the
reconstruction accuracy of the mass-mixing oscillation parameters at the
KamLAND reactor experiment.Comment: 10 pages + 8 figure
Supersymmetric Leptogenesis
We study leptogenesis in the supersymmetric standard model plus the seesaw.
We identify important qualitative differences that characterize supersymmetric
leptogenesis with respect to the non-supersymmetric case. The lepton number
asymmetries in fermions and scalars do not equilibrate, and are related via a
non-vanishing gaugino chemical potential. Due to the presence of new anomalous
symmetries, electroweak sphalerons couple to winos and higgsinos, and QCD
sphalerons couple to gluinos, thus modifying the corresponding chemical
equilibrium conditions. A new constraint on particles chemical potentials
corresponding to an exactly conserved -charge, that also involves the number
density asymmetry of the heavy sneutrinos, appears. These new ingredients
determine the matrices that mix up the density asymmetries of the
lepton flavours and of the heavy sneutrinos. We explain why in all temperature
ranges the particle thermodynamic system is characterized by the same number of
independent quantities. Numerical differences with respect to usual treatment
remain at the level.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures. Typos corrected, one reference added. Version
published in JCA
Constraining neutrino oscillation parameters with current solar and atmospheric data
We analyze the impact of recent solar, atmospheric and reactor data in the
determination of the neutrino oscillation parameters, taking into account that
both the solar nu_e and the atmospheric nu_mu may convert to a mixture of
active and sterile neutrinos. We use the most recent global solar neutrino
data, including the 1496-day Super-K neutrino data sample, and we investigate
in detail the impact of the SNO neutral current, spectral and day/night data by
performing also an analysis using only the charged current rate from SNO. The
implications of the first 145.1 days of KamLAND data on the determination of
the solar neutrino parameters are also discussed in detail. We confirm the
clear preference of solar+reactor data for the pure active LMA-MSW solution of
the solar neutrino problem, and obtain that the LOW, VAC, SMA and Just-So^2
solutions are disfavored with a Delta_chi^2 = 22, 22, 36, 44, respectively.
Furthermore, we find that the global solar data constrains the admixture of a
sterile neutrino to be less than 43% at 99% CL. By performing an improved fit
of the atmospheric data, we also update the corresponding regions of
oscillation parameters. We find that the recent atmospheric Super-K (1489-day)
and MACRO data have a strong impact on constraining a sterile component in
atmospheric oscillations: if the nu_mu is restricted to the atmospheric mass
states only a sterile admixture of 16% is allowed at 99% CL, while a bound of
35% is obtained in the unconstrained case. Pure sterile oscillations are
disfavored with a Delta_chi^2 = 34.6 compared to the pure active case.Comment: 28 pages, LaTeX file using RevTEX4, 12 figures and 3 tables included.
Improved version including the new KamLAND dat
Supernova pointing with low- and high-energy neutrino detectors
A future galactic SN can be located several hours before the optical
explosion through the MeV-neutrino burst, exploiting the directionality of
--scattering in a water Cherenkov detector such as Super-Kamiokande. We
study the statistical efficiency of different methods for extracting the SN
direction and identify a simple approach that is nearly optimal, yet
independent of the exact SN neutrino spectra. We use this method to quantify
the increase in the pointing accuracy by the addition of gadolinium to water,
which tags neutrons from the inverse beta decay background. We also study the
dependence of the pointing accuracy on neutrino mixing scenarios and initial
spectra. We find that in the ``worst case'' scenario the pointing accuracy is
at 95% C.L. in the absence of tagging, which improves to
with a tagging efficiency of 95%. At a megaton detector, this accuracy can be
as good as . A TeV-neutrino burst is also expected to be emitted
contemporaneously with the SN optical explosion, which may locate the SN to
within a few tenths of a degree at a future km high-energy neutrino
telescope. If the SN is not seen in the electromagnetic spectrum, locating it
in the sky through neutrinos is crucial for identifying the Earth matter
effects on SN neutrino oscillations.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, Revtex4 format. The final version to be
published in Phys. Rev. D. A few points in the original text are clarifie
Solar neutrino oscillation parameters after first KamLAND results
We analyze the energy spectrum of reactor neutrino events recently observed
in the Kamioka Liquid scintillator Anti-Neutrino Detector (KamLAND) and combine
them with solar and terrestrial neutrino data, in the context of two- and
three-family active neutrino oscillations. In the 2-neutrino case, we find that
the solution to the solar neutrino problem at large mixing angle (LMA) is
basically split into two sub-regions, that we denote as LMA-I and LMA-II. The
LMA-I solution, characterized by lower values of the squared neutrino mass gap,
is favored by the global data fit. This picture is not significantly modified
in the 3-neutrino mixing case. A brief discussion is given about the
discrimination of the LMA-I and LMA-II solutions with future KamLAND data. In
both the 2- and 3-neutrino cases, we present a detailed analysis of the
post-KamLAND bounds on the oscillation parameters.Comment: Revised version. Two figures adde
Deviation of Neutrino Mixing from Bi-maximal
We have studied how observables of the neutrino mixing matrix can link up
with the ones in the quark sector. The deviation from the bi-maximal flavor
mixing is parameterized using a 3 x 3 unitary matrix. The neutrino mixings are
investigated supposing this unitary matrix to be hierarchical like the quark
mixing matrix. We obtain the remarkable prediction |U_{e3}| >= 0.03 from the
experimentally allowed range tan^2 theta_{sol} = 0.24 ~ 0.89. The CP violation
in neutrino oscillations is expected to be very small.Comment: Some references are adde
SN1987A and the Status of Oscillation Solutions to the Solar Neutrino Problem (including an appendix discussing the NC and day/night data from SNO)
We study neutrino oscillations and the level-crossing probability PLZ in
power-law potential profiles A(r)\propto r^n. We give local and global
adiabaticity conditions valid for all mixing angles theta and discuss different
representations for PLZ. For the 1/r^3 profile typical of supernova envelopes
we compare our analytical to numerical results and to earlier approximations
used in the literature. We then perform a combined likelihood analysis of the
observed SN1987A neutrino signal and of the latest solar neutrino data,
including the recent SNO CC measurement. We find that, unless all relevant
supernova parameters (released binding energy, \bar\nu_e and \bar\nu_{\mu,\tau}
temperatures) are near their lowest values found in simulations, the status of
large mixing type solutions deteriorates considerably compared to fits using
only solar data. This is sufficient to rule out the vacuum-type solutions for
most reasonable choices of astrophysics parameters. The LOW solution may still
be acceptable, but becomes worse than the SMA-MSW solution which may, in some
cases, be the best combined solution. On the other hand the LMA-MSW solution
can easily survive as the best overall solution, although its size is generally
reduced when compared to fits to the solar data only.Comment: 31 pages, 32 eps figures; 5 pages, 5 eps figures addendum in v2,
discussing the recent SNO NC data and changes in SN paramete
Quasi-energy-independent solar neutrino transitions
Current solar, atmospheric, and reactor neutrino data still allow oscillation
scenarios where the squared mass differences are all close to 10^-3 eV^2,
rather than being hierarchically separated. For solar neutrinos, this situation
(realized in the upper part of the so-called large-mixing angle solution)
implies adiabatic transitions which depend weakly on the neutrino energy and on
the matter density, as well as on the ``atmospheric'' squared mass difference.
In such a regime of ``quasi-energy-independent'' (QEI) transitions,
intermediate between the more familiar ``Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein'' (MSW)
and energy-independent (EI) regimes, we first perform analytical calculations
of the solar nu_e survival probability at first order in the matter density,
beyond the usual hierarchical approximations. We then provide accurate,
generalized expressions for the solar neutrino mixing angles in matter, which
reduce to those valid in the MSW, QEI and EI regimes in appropriate limits.
Finally, a representative QEI scenario is discussed in some detail.Comment: Title changed; text and acronyms revised; results unchanged. To
appear in PR
Model Independent Information On Solar Neutrino Oscillations
We present the results of a Bayesian analysis of solar neutrino data in terms
of nu_e->nu_{mu,tau} oscillations, independent from the Standard Solar Model
predictions for the solar neutrino fluxes. We show that such a model
independent analysis allows to constraint the values of the neutrino mixing
parameters in limited regions around the usual SMA, LMA, LOW and VO regions.
Furthermore, there is a strong indication in favor of large neutrino mixing and
large values of Delta m^2 (LMA region). We calculate also the allowed ranges of
the neutrino fluxes and we show that they are in good agreement with the
Standard Solar Model prediction. In particular, the ratio of the 8B flux with
its Standard Solar Model prediction is constrained in the interval [0.45,1.42]
with 99.73% probability. Finally, we show that the hypothesis of no neutrino
oscillations is strongly disfavored in a model independent way with respect to
the hypothesis of neutrino oscillations.Comment: 40 pages, 20 figures. Added references and improved figure