A COHERENT Search Strategy for Beyond Standard Model Neutrino Interactions

Abstract

We study the sensitivity of the stopped pion source of neutrinos at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI). In particular, we find that simple event counting above threshold can improve constraints on NSI for electron- and muon- flavored NSI, with the strongest constraints arising for flavor-diagonal NSI coupling to $\mu$ neutrinos. However, if the detector resolution is sufficient to all for even a coarse spectral study of events, COHERENT will also be sensitive to the mass scale of NSI. We demonstrate that this can yield new limits on $Z^{\prime }$ completions of NSI if the gauge boson mass is $\lesssim 1$ GeV.

Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures; v2 includes more references and corrected Fig.1, conclusions unchanged