Measuring the sterile neutrino CP phase at DUNE and T2HK

Abstract

Abstract The CP phases associated with the sterile neutrino cannot be measured in the dedicated short-baseline experiments being built to test the sterile neutrino hypothesis. On the other hand, these phases can be measured in long-baseline experiments, even though the main goal of these experiments is not to test or measure sterile neutrino parameters. In particular, the sterile neutrino phase $$\delta _{24}$$ δ24 affects the charged-current electron appearance data in long-baseline experiment. In this paper we show how well the sterile neutrino phase $$\delta _{24}$$ δ24 can be measured by the next-generation long-baseline experiments DUNE, T2HK (and T2HKK). We also show the expected precision with which this sterile phase can be measured by combining the DUNE data with data from T2HK or T2HKK. The T2HK experiment is seen to be able to measure the sterile phase $$\delta _{24}$$ δ24 to a reasonable precision. We also present the sensitivity of these experiments to the sterile mixing angles, both by themselves, as well as when DUNE is combined with T2HK or T2HKK.