Measurements of CP--violating observables in neutrino oscillation experiments
have been studied in the literature as a way to determine the CP--violating
phase in the mixing matrix for leptons. Here we show that such observables also
probe new neutrino interactions in the production or detection processes.
Genuine CP violation and fake CP violation due to matter effects are sensitive
to the imaginary and real parts of new couplings. The dependence of the CP
asymmetry on source--detector distance is different from the standard one and,
in particular, enhanced at short distances. We estimate that future neutrino
factories will be able to probe in this way new interactions that are up to
four orders of magnitude weaker than the weak interactions. We discuss the
possible implications for models of new physics.Comment: ReVTeX, 28 pages, 7 figues. v2: Modifications in section VIII to
reflect the fact that some of the couplings that were discussed in this
section are irrelevant to our analysis (as pointed out in hep-ph/0112329);
Added a discussion in section IX of the relevance of other future experiments
that will search for lepton flavor violatio