Short-baseline neutrino oscillations with 3+1 non-unitary mixing

Abstract

We consider a scenario with unitary mixing of the three light standard neutrinos and a non-unitary mixing contribution of a heavier massive neutrino that can generate short-baseline neutrino oscillations. We show that this scenario predicts constant flavor-changing probabilities at short-baseline distances. Therefore, it cannot explain the spectral distortions observed in the LSND and MiniBooNE appearance experiments. On the other hand, the survival probabilities oscillate as functions of $L/E$ and could explain oscillations in short-baseline disappearance experiments. We also derive the bounds on the mixing parameters from the existing short-baseline neutrino oscillation data.