Atmospheric neutrino observations and flavor changing interactions

Abstract

Flavor changing (FC) neutrino-matter interactions can account for the zenith-angle dependent deficit of atmospheric neutrinos observed in the SuperKamiokande experiment, without directly invoking neither neutrino mass, nor mixing. We find that FC ${\nu }_{\mu }$-matter interactions provide a good fit to the observed zenith angle distributions, comparable in quality to the neutrino oscillation hypothesis. The required FC interactions arise naturally in many attractive extensions of the Standard Model.

Comments: RevTex, 4 pages, 2 postscript figures, some minor modifications in the text and few new references are added, no change in the results and conclusions, final version to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett