Improved Constraints on Sterile Neutrino Mixing from Disappearance Searches in the MINOS, <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>MINOS</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math>, Daya Bay, and Bugey-3 Experiments
P. Adamson, Fengpeng An, I. M. Anghel, A. Aurisano, A. B. Balantekin, H. R. Band, G. Barr, M. Bishai, A. Blake, S. Blyth, G. F. Cao, Jun Cao, S. Cao, Timothy J. Carroll, C. M. Castromonte, J. F. Chang, Y. Chang, S. Chen, R. Chen, S. M. Chen, Y. Chen, Y. X. Chen, Jie Cheng, Zhaokan Cheng, J. J. Cherwinka, S. Childress, M. C. Chu, A. Chukanov, J. A. B. Coelho, J. P. Cummings, N. Dash, S. De Rijck, F. S. Deng, Ying Ding, M. V. Diwan, Tadeáš Dohnal, Dmitry Dolzhikov, J. Dove, Martin Dvořák, D. A. Dwyer, J. J. Evans, G. J. Feldman, W. Flanagan, M. Gabrielyan, J. P. Gallo, S. Germani, R. A. Gomes, M. Gonchar, G. H. Gong, Haipeng Gong, P. Gouffon, N. Graf, K. Grzelak, W. Gu, J. Y. Guo, Lei Guo, Xin-Heng Guo, Yuhang Guo, Ziyi Guo, A. Habig, R. Hackenburg, S. R. Hahn, S. Hans, J. Hartnell, R. Hatcher, M. He, K. M. Heeger, Y. K. Heng, A. Higuera, A. Holin, Y. K. Hor, Y. Hsiung, Beibei Hu, Jun Hu, T. Hu, Z. Hu, H. X. Huang, J. Huang, X. T. Huang, Y. B. Huang, Patrick Huber, D. E. Jaffe, K. L. Jen, X. L. Ji, Xihan Ji, Rob Johnson, D. Jones, Li-Wei Kang, S. H. Kettell, L. W. Koerner, S. Kohn, M. Kordosky, M. Krämer, A. Kreymer, K. Lang, T. J. Langford, J. Lee, J. H. C. Lee, R. T. Lei, R. Leitner
Abstract
Searches for electron antineutrino, muon neutrino, and muon antineutrino disappearance driven by sterile neutrino mixing have been carried out by the Daya Bay and MINOS+ collaborations. This Letter presents the combined results of these searches, along with exclusion results from the Bugey-3 reactor experiment, framed in a minimally extended four-neutrino scenario. Significantly improved constraints on the θ_{μe} mixing angle are derived that constitute the most constraining limits to date over five orders of magnitude in the mass-squared splitting Δm_{41}^{2}, excluding the 90% C.L. sterile-neutrino parameter space allowed by the LSND and MiniBooNE observations at 90% CL_{s} for Δm_{41}^{2}<13 eV^{2}. Furthermore, the LSND and MiniBooNE 99% C.L. allowed regions are excluded at 99% CL_{s} for Δm_{41}^{2}<1.6 eV^{2}.