New light weakly-coupled particle searches in a neutrino detector

2nd International Conference on Mathematical Modeling in Physical Sciences 2013

物理学;数学

Hatzikoutelis, A.^1 ; Kotelnikov, S.^2 ; Bambah, B.A.^3 ; Kasetti, S.P.^3

University of Tennessee Knoxville, United States^1

Lebedev Institute of Moscow, Russia^2

University of Hyderabad, India^3

关键词: Coupled particles;    Fermilab;    Neutrino detectors;    Neutrino oscillations;    Neutrino physics;    New physics;    Simulation framework;    Sterile neutrinos;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/490/1/012070/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/490/1/012070

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Neutrino detectors at the accelerator machines of the Intensity Frontier in particle physics are becoming commonplace. As their capabilities are being understood, they seem to have the potential for studies beyond the neutrino oscillations measurements. Besides these primary neutrino physics goals, a number of exotic searches can be done with such detectors in general, and the NOvA detectors that we present here, as a particular example. Specifically, we focus on simulating signatures in NOvA experiment's Near-Detector (300 ton, 900 m from the NuMI target of Fermilab) that correspond to beam-generated new physics states from hidden sectors, dark sectors, axion-like particles, heavy or sterile neutrinos, and heavy photons. As there are no physics generators that can inherently include such states, along with the mainstream production branches, we present here the initial stages of an effort to incorporate these signatures manually in the overall simulation framework of the NOvA experiment. For this, we discuss examples and examine the potential and challenges for detecting such signatures.