Sterile Neutrinos: Phenomenology and Theory

Abstract

A sterile neutrino in addition to the three known neutrinos seems unavoidable if one wants a simultaneous understanding of the results of the LSND experiment indicating $\nu_{\mu}-\nu_e$ oscillation together with other evidences for neutrino oscillations such as those from solar and atmospheric neutrino deficits. A major theoretical challenge then is to understand why the sterile neutrino is so light. A simple solution appears to be to assume that it is the lightest neutrino of a mirror sector of the universe which has identical matter and gauge content as the standard model. After a brief review of the phenomenology, a recently constructed realistic grand unified model based on the gauge group $SO(10)\times SO(10)^\prime$ that embeds the mirror universe idea is presented. Detailed predictions for known and the sterile neutrino sector are given and their consequences for cosmology are mentioned.Comment: Invited talk presented at the workshop on "New trends in neutrino physics" held at the Ringberg Castle, Germany, May 24-28, 1998; 10 page