Dipole portal and neutrinophilic scalars at DUNE revisited: The importance of the high-energy neutrino tail
Maksym Ovchynnikov, Thomas Schwetz, Jing-yu Zhu
Abstract
We estimate the sensitivity of the DUNE experiment to new physics particles interacting with neutrinos, considering the dipole portal to heavy neutral leptons and a neutrinophilic scalar with lepton-number 2 as examples. We demonstrate that neutrinos from the high-energy tail of the DUNE flux, with energies ${E}_{\ensuremath{\nu}}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}5--10\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$, may significantly improve the sensitivity to these models, allowing to search for particles as heavy as $\ensuremath{\simeq}10\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$. We also study the impact of the so-called tau-optimized neutrino beam configuration, which slightly improves sensitivity to the new physics models considered here. For both models, we consider new production channels (such as deep-inelastic scattering) and provide a detailed comparison of different signatures in the detector.