Light sterile neutrinos, lepton number violating interactions and short baseline neutrino experiments

Abstract

We develop the consequences of introducing a purely leptonic, non-standard interaction (NSI) ΔL = 2, four-fermion effective Lagrangian and standard model neutrino mixing with a fourth, sterile neutrino in the analysis of short-baseline, neutrino experiments. We focus on the muon decay at rest (DAR) results from the Liquid Scintillation Neutrino Experiment (LSND) and the Karlsruhe and Rutherford medium Energy Neutrino Experiment (KARMEN), seeking a reconciliation between the two. Both v¯e appearance from v¯μ oscillation and v¯e survival after production from NSI decay of the µ+ contribute to the expected signal. This is a unique feature of our scheme. We comment on further implications of the lepton number violating interaction and sterile neutrino-standard neutrino mixing.