Impact of scalar NSI on the neutrino mass hierarchy sensitivity at DUNE, T2HK and T2HKK

Author:

Arnab Sarker, Abinash Medhi, Dharitree Bezboruah, Moon Moon Devi, Debajyoti Dutta

Keyword:

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

journal:

date:

2023-09-20 16:00:00

Abstract

The study of neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI) is a well-motivated phenomenological scenario to explore new physics beyond the Standard Model. The possible scalar coupling of neutrinos ($\nu$) with matter is one of such new physics scenarios which appears as a sub-dominant effect that can impact the $\nu$-oscillations in matter. The presence of scalar NSI introduces an additional contribution directly to the $\nu$-mass matrix in the interaction Hamiltonian and subsequently to the $\nu$-oscillations. This indicates that scalar NSI may have a significant impact on measurements related to $\nu$-oscillations e.g. leptonic CP phase $(\delta_{CP})$, $\theta_{23}$ octant and neutrino mass hierarchy (MH). The linear scaling of the effects of scalar NSI with matter density also motivates its exploration in long-baseline (LBL) experiments. In this paper, we study the impact of a scalar-mediated NSI on the MH sensitivity of DUNE, T2HK and T2HKK, which are upcoming LBL experiments. We observe that the MH sensitivities of these experiments are affected by scalar NSI. For certain chosen values of scalar NSI elements, we note an enhancement in the standard MH sensitivities. We then combine the data from DUNE with T2HK/T2HKK to explore possible synergy among these experiments in a wider parameter space. We also observe a significant enhancement in the MH sensitivities for the combined analysis.

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