Matter Effect on Neutrino Oscillations from the violation of Universality in Neutrino Neutral Current Interactions

Abstract

The violation of lepton-flavor-universality in the neutrinoZ interactions can lead to extra matter effects on neutrino oscillations at high energies, beyond that due to the usual charged-current interaction of the electron-neutrino. We show that the dominant effect of the violation is a shift in the effective value of θ₂₃. This is in contrast to the dominant effect of the charged-current interaction which shifts θ₁₂ and θ₁₃. The shift in θ₂₃ will be difficult to observe if the value of sin²(2θ₂₃) is too close to one. However, if the value of sin²(2θ₂₃) is as small as 0.92, then a Fermilab →Hyper-Kamiokande experiment can potentially place a constraint on universality violation at the 1% level after 5 years of data taking.