Confronting mass-varying neutrinos with MiniBooNE

Abstract

We study the proposal that mass-varying neutrinos could provide an explanation for the LSND signal for ${\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}}_{\ensuremath{\mu}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\overline{\ensuremath{\nu}}}_{e}$ oscillations. We first point out that all positive oscillation signals occur in matter and that three active mass-varying neutrinos are insufficient to describe all existing neutrino data including LSND. We then examine the possibility that a model with four mass-varying neutrinos (three active and one sterile) can explain the LSND effect and remain consistent with all other neutrino data. We find that such models with a $3+1$ mass structure in the neutrino sector may explain the LSND data and a null MiniBooNE result for $0.10\ensuremath{\lesssim}{sin}^{2}2{\ensuremath{\theta}}_{x}\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.30$. Predictions of the model include a null result at Double-CHOOZ, but positive signals for underground reactor experiments and for ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\ensuremath{\mu}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{e}$ oscillations in long-baseline experiments.