Atmospheric neutrinos, $nu_e-nu_s$ oscillations, and a novel neutrino evolution equation

Abstract

If a sterile neutrino nu_s with an eV-scale mass and a sizeable mixing to the electron neutrino exists, as indicated by the reactor and gallium neutrino anomalies, a strong resonance enhancement of nu_e-nu_s oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos should occur in the TeV energy range. At these energies neutrino flavour transitions in the 3+1 scheme depend on just one neutrino mass squared difference and are fully described within a 3-flavour oscillation framework. We demonstrate that the flavour transitions of atmospheric nu_e can actually be very accurately described in a 2-flavour framework, with neutrino flavour evolution governed by an inhomogeneous Schroedinger-like equation. Evolution equations of this type have not been previously considered in the theory of neutrino oscillations.