Sterile neutrino search at the Fermilab Short Baseline Neutrino Program

Student: Bethany Slater
Supervisor: Costas Andreopoulos

The goal of this project is to perform, within the VALOR analysis framework, a joint analysis of several key exclusive final state samples recorded on SBND. The purpose of this effort is to i) improve the phenomenology of neutrino interactions in the GENIE simulation used by SBN, ii) produce stringent SBND-driven constraints of flux and cross-section systematic uncertainties, and iii) improve the estimates of the unoscillated event rates at ICARUS, the far detector of the SBN program. The aim of this project is to enable the oscillation sensitivity of the full SBN program that, for the definitive 5σ exclusion the hypothesis of light sterile neutrinos with the parameters suggested by the LSND/MiniBooNE anomaly, rests upon the ability to constrain at 1% level all the systematics that are uncorrelated between SBND and ICARUS. A parallel objective of this project is to contribute to the development of exclusive final state selections on SBND, with particular emphasis on single-pion production.