Discriminating between numu <-> nutau and numu <-> nusterile in atmospheric numu oscillations with the Super-Kamiokande detector
Abstract
A strong body of evidence now exists for atmospheric numu disappearance oscillations. Such disappearance could be explained by oscillations to either nutau or a ``sterile'' neutrino (nus). Super-Kamiokande uses three different methods to distinguish between these two scenarios. First, matter effects would suppress the numu <-> nus oscillation amplitude at high energy. Second, oscillation to nus would reduce the overall neutral-current neutrino interaction rate. Third, the smoking gun of numu <-> nutau oscillations would be the observation of tau appearance resulting from charged-current nutau interactions. The results of these three techniques are presented, which strongly favor numu <-> nutau oscillations over numu <-> nus.
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