Sterile neutrino shortcuts in asymmetrically warped extra dimensions

Abstract

Light sterile neutrinos are a popular extension of the Standard Model and are being discussed as a possible explanation for various neutrino oscillation anomalies, including the LSND, MiniBooNE, Reactor and Gallium anomalies. In order to avoid inconsistencies with constraints derived from disappearance experiments and cosmology, altered dispersion relations – which may originate from extra dimensions – have been proposed as a possible solution, dubbed as “neutrino shortcuts in the extra dimension”. In this paper we develop a neutrino mass model with an asymmetrically warped extra dimension and two additional gauge singlet neutrinos, one being responsible for neutrino mass generation, while the other one is allowed to propagate in the extra dimension, giving rise to the desired change of the dispersion relation on the brane. By compactifying the extra-dimensional theory on an S^1/mathbb {Z}_2 orbifold, deriving the shape of the Kaluza–Klein tower and identifying the effective sterile neutrino dispersion relation on the brane, we can demonstrate that the earlier, phenomenological models are recovered as the 4-dimensional effective field theory limit of the model discussed here.