NESSiE: The Experimental Sterile Neutrino Search in Short-Base-Line at CERN

Abstract

Several different experimental results are indicating the existence of anomalies in the neutrino sector. Models beyond the standard model have been developed to explain these results and involve one or more additional neutrinos that do not weakly interact. A new experimental program is therefore needed to study this potential new physics with a possibly new Short-Base-Line neutrino beam at CERN. CERN is actually promoting the start up of a New Neutrino Facility in the North Area site, which may host two complementary detectors, one based on LAr technology and one corresponding to a muon spectrometer. The system is doubled in two different sites. With regards to the latter option, NESSiE, Neutrino Experiment with Spectrometers in Europe, had been proposed for the search of sterile neutrinos studying Charged Current (CC) muon neutrino and antineutrino ineractions. The detectors consists of two magnetic spectrometers to be located in two sites:"Near" and "Far" from the proton target of the CERN-SPS beam. Each spectrometer will be complemented by an ICARUS-like LAr target in order to allow also Neutral Current (NC) and electron neutrino CC interactions reconstruction.