Matter effects in upward-going muons and sterile neutrino oscillations

Authors
Ambrosio, M Antolini, R Auriemma, G Bakari, D Baldini, A Barbarino, GC Barish, BC Battistoni, G Becherini, Y Bellotti, R Bemporad, C Bernardini, P Bilokon, H Bisi, V Bloise, C Bower, C Brigida, M Bussino, S Cafagna, F Calicchio, M Campana, D Carboni, M Caruso, R Cecchini, S Cei, F Chiarella, V Choudhary, BC Coutu, S De Cataldo, G Dekhissi, H De Marzo, C De Mitri, I Derkaoui, J De Vincenzi, M Di Credico, A Erriquez, O Favuzzi, C Forti, C Fusco, P Giacomelli, G Giannini, G Giglietto, N Giorgini, M Grassi, M Gray, L Grillo, A Guarino, F Gustavino, C Habig, A Hanson, K Heinz, R Iarocci, E Katsavounidis, E Katsavounidis, I Kearns, E Kim, H Kyriazopoulou, S Lamanna, E Lane, C Levin, DS Lipari, P Longley, NP Longo, MJ Loparco, F Maaroufi, F Mancarella, G Mandrioli, G Margiotta, A Marini, A Martello, D Marzari-Chiesa, A Mazziotta, MN Michael, DG Mikheyev, S Miller, L Monacelli, P Montaruli, T Monteno, M Mufson, S Musser, J Nicolo, D Nolty, R Orth, C Osteria, G Palamara, O Patera, V Patrizii, L Pazzi, R Peck, CW Perrone, L Petrera, S Pistilli, P Popa, V Raino, A Reynoldson, J Ronga, F Rrhioua, A Satriano, C Scapparone, E Scholberg, K Sciubba, A Serra, P Sioli, M Sirri, G Sitta, M Spinelli, P Spinetti, M Spurio, M Steinberg, R Stone, JL Sulak, LR Surdo, A Tarle, G Togo, V Vakili, M Walter, CW Webb, R
Citation
M. Ambrosio et al., Matter effects in upward-going muons and sterile neutrino oscillations, PHYS LETT B, 517(1-2), 2001, pp. 59-66
Citations number
39
Categorie Soggetti
Physics
Journal title
PHYSICS LETTERS B
ISSN journal
03702693 → ACNP
Volume
517
Issue
1-2
Year of publication
2001
Pages
59 - 66
Database
ISI
SICI code
0370-2693(20010927)517:1-2<59:MEIUMA>2.0.ZU;2-P
Abstract
The angular distribution of upward-going muons produced by atmospheric neut rinos in the rock below the MACRO detector shows anomalies in good agreemen t with two flavor nu (mu) --> nu (tau) oscillations with maximum mixing and Deltam(2) around 0.0024 eV(2). Exploiting the dependence of magnitude of t he matter effect on oscillation channel, and using a set of 809 upward-goin g muons observed in MACRO, we show that the two flavor nu (mu) --> nu (s) o scillation is disfavored with 99% C.L. with respect to nu (mu) --> nu (tau) . (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.