Sensitivity to electronvolt-scale sterile neutrinos at a 3.8-GeV/c muon decay ring

Abstract

The liquid-scintillator neutrino-detector (LSND) and mini booster neutrino experiment (MiniBooNE) experiments claim to observe the oscillation $$\bar{v}$$μ → $$\bar{v}$$e, which can only be explained by additional neutrinos and is a claim that must be further tested. This thesis proposes a new accelerator and experiment called neutrinos from stored muons ( STORM) to refute or confirm the oscillation these claims by studying the CPT-equivalent channel ve → vμ . A 3.8-GeV/c muon decay ring is proposed with neutrino detectors placed 20 m and 2000 m from the decay ring. The detector technology would be a magnetized iron sampling calorimeter, where the magnetic field is induced by a superconducting transmission line. In a frequentist study, the sensitivity of this experiment after 5 years would be >10σ . The range of the thesis discussion starts with the proton front-end design and ends with neutrino parameter estimation. After describing the phenomenology of sterile neutrinos, the facility and detector performance work is presented. Finally, the systematics are explained before the sensitivity and parameter-estimation works are explained