Testing mass-varying neutrinos with reactor experiments

Abstract

We propose that reactor experiments could be used to constrain the environment dependence of neutrino mass and mixing parameters, which could be induced due to an acceleron coupling to matter fields. There are several short-baseline reactor experiment projects with different fractions of air and earth matter along the neutrino path. Moreover, the short baselines, in principle, allow the physical change of the material between source and detector. Hence, such experiments offer the possibility for a direct comparison of oscillations in air and matter. We demonstrate that for $\sin^2 2 θ_{13} \gtrsim 0.04$, two reactor experiments (one air, one matter) with baselines of at least 1.5 km can constrain any oscillation effect which is different in air and matter at the level of a few per cent. Furthermore, we find that using the same experiment while physically moving the material between source and detector improves systematics.