Abstract: We explore the complementarity of direct detection (DD) and spallation source (SS) experiments for the study of sterile neutrino physics. We focus on the sterile baryonic neutrino model: an extension of the Standard Model that introduces a massive sterile neutrino with couplings to the quark sector via a new gauge boson. In this scenario, the inelastic scattering of an active neutrino with the target material in both DD and SS experiments gives rise to a characteristic nuclear recoil energy spectrum that can allow for the reconstruction of the neutrino mass in the event of a positive detection. We first derive new bounds on this model based on the data from the COHERENT collaboration on CsI and LAr targets, which we find do not yet probe new areas of the parameter space. We then assess how well future SS experiments will be able to measure the sterile neutrino mass and mixings, showing that masses in the range similar to 15 – 50 MeV can be reconstructed. We show that there is a degeneracy in the measurement of the sterile neutrino mixing that substantially affects the reconstruction of parameters for masses of the order of 40 MeV. Thanks to their lower energy threshold and sensitivity to the solar tau neutrino flux, DD experiments allow us to partially lift the degeneracy in the sterile neutrino mixings and considerably improve its mass reconstruction down to 9 MeV. Our results demonstrate the excellent complementarity between DD and SS experiments in measuring the sterile neutrino mass and highlight the power of DD experiments in searching for new physics in the neutrino sector.

Abstract: The CPT symmetry, which combines Charge Conjugation, Parity, and Time Reversal, is a cornerstone of our model-building method, and its probable violation will endanger the most extended tool we presently utilize to explain physics, namely local relativistic quantum fields. However, the kaon system's conservation constraints appear to be rather severe. We will show in this paper that neutrino oscillation experiments can enhance this limit by many orders of magnitude, making them an excellent instrument for investigating the basis of our understanding of Nature. As a result, verifying CPT invariance does not evaluate a specific model, but rather the entire paradigm. Therefore, as the CPT's status in the neutrino sector, linked or not to Lorentz invariance violation, will be assessed at an unprecedented level by current and future long baseline experiments, distinguishing it from comparable experimental fingerprints coming from non-standard interactions is critical. Whether the entire paradigm or simply the conventional model of neutrinos is at jeopardy is significantly dependent on this.

Abstract: The extraction of the neutrino mass ordering is one of the major challenges in particle physics and cosmology, not only for its implications for a fundamental theory of mass generation in nature, but also for its decisive role in the scale of future neutrinoless double beta decay experimental searches. It has been recently claimed that current oscillation, beta decay and cosmological limits on the different observables describing the neutrino mass parameter space provide robust decisive Bayesian evidence in favor of the normal ordering of the neutrino mass spectrum [1]. We further investigate these strong claims using a rich and wide phenomenology, with different sampling techniques of the neutrino parameter space. Contrary to the findings of Jimenez et al. [1], no decisive evidence for the normal mass ordering is found. Neutrino mass ordering analyses must rely on priors and parameterizations that are ordering-agnostic: robust results should be regarded as those in which the preference for the normal neutrino mass ordering is driven exclusively by the data, while we find a difference of up to a factor of 33 in the Bayes factors among the different priors and parameterizations exploited here. An ordering-agnostic prior would be represented by the case of parameterizations sampling over the two mass splittings and a mass scale, or those sampling over the individual neutrino masses via normal prior distributions only. In this regard, we show that the current significance in favor of the normal mass ordering should be taken as 2.7 sigma (i.e. moderate evidence), mostly driven by neutrino oscillation data. Let us stress that, while current data favor NO only mildly, we do not exclude the possibility that this may change in the future. Eventually, upcoming oscillation and cosmological data may (or may not) lead to a more significant exclusion of IO.