Probing New Physics by Comparing Solar and KamLAND Data

Abstract

We explore whether KamLAND and solar data may end up inconsistent when analyzed in terms of two-flavor neutrino oscillations. If this turned out to be the case, one would be led to conclude that there is more new physics, besides neutrino masses and mixing, in the leptonic sector. On the other hand, given that KamLAND and solar data currently agree when analyzed in terms of two-flavor neutrino oscillations, one is able to place nontrivial bounds on several manifestations of new physics. In particular, we compute how well a combined KamLAND and solar data analysis is able to constrain a specific form of violation of CPT invariance by placing a very stringent upper bound, |Delta m^2 - Delta bar{m}^2| < 1.1 10^{-4} eV^2 (3 sigma). We also estimate upper bounds on sin^2 theta - sin^2 bar{theta}. These are quite poor due to the fact that matter effects are almost irrelevant at KamLAND, which leads to an intrinsic inability to distinguish whether the antineutrino mixing angle is on the light (bar{theta} < pi/4) or dark side of the parameter space (bar{theta} > pi/4). We briefly discuss whether this ambiguity can be resolved by future long-baseline bar{nu}_e to bar{nu}_{e,mu} searches.