Effects for atmospheric neutrino experiments from electron neutrino oscillations

Abstract

The minimal interpretation of the atmospheric neutrino data suggests that the muon neutrino oscillates into another species with a mixing angle close to the maximal $\pi /4$. In the Exact Parity Symmetric Model, both the muon and electron neutrinos are expected to be maximally mixed with essentially sterile partners (${\nu }_{\mu }^{\prime }$ and ${\nu }_e^{\prime }$ respectively). We examine the impact of maximal ${\nu }_e-{\nu }_e^{\prime }$ oscillations on the atmospheric neutrino experiments. We estimate that maximal ${\nu }_e-{\nu }_e^{\prime }$ oscillations will have effects on atmospheric neutrino data for $|\delta m^2({\nu }_e-{\nu }_e^{\prime })|>7\times 10^{-5}e{V}^2$. For $\delta m^2$ in this range, a slight but distinctive rise in the ratio of muon-like to electron-like events is predicted for the low-energy sample. Furthermore, the ratio of low-energy electron-like events with zenith angles less than $90\mathrm{deg}$ to those with zenith angles greater than $90\mathrm{deg}$ should be greater than 1.

Comments: 11 pages, LaTeX, no figures