MINOS

Abstract: We present an up-to-date global analysis of solar, atmospheric, reactor, and accelerator neutrino data in the framework of three-neutrino oscillations. We provide results on the determination of θ 13 from global data and discuss the dependence on the choice of reactor fluxes. We study in detail the statistical significance of a possible deviation of θ 23 from maximal mixing, the determination of its octant, the ordering of the mass states, and the sensitivity to the CP violating phase, and discuss the role of various complementary data sets in those respects.

Abstract: This letter reports results from the MINOS experiment based on its initial exposure to neutrinos from the Fermilab NuMI beam. The rate and energy spectra of charged current muon neutrino interactions are compared in two detectors located along the beam axis at distances of 1 km and 735 km. With 1.27 x 10^{20} 120 GeV protons incident on the NuMI target, 215 events with energies below 30 GeV are observed at the Far Detector, compared to an expectation of 336 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\pm 14.4 events. The data are consistent with muon neutrino disappearance via oscillation with |\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\Delta m^2_{23}| = 2.74^{+0.44}_{-0.26} x 10^{-3} eV^2/c^4 and sin^2(2\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\theta_{23}) > 0.87 (at 60% C.L.).

Abstract: We review the present status of three-flavour neutrino oscillations, taking into account the latest available neutrino oscillation data presented at the Neutrino 2008 Conference. This includes the data released this summer by the MINOS collaboration, the data of the neutral current counter phase of the SNO solar neutrino experiment, as well as the latest KamLAND and Borexino data. We give the updated determinations of the leading 'solar' and 'atmospheric' oscillation parameters. We find from global data that the mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ is consistent with zero within $0.9\sigma$ and we derive an upper bound of $\sin^2\theta_{13} < 0.035 (0.056)$ at 90% CL (3$\sigma$).

Abstract: We discuss the sensitivity of neutrino experiments at the luminosity frontier to generic hidden sectors containing new (sub)-GeV neutral states. The weak interaction of these states with the standard model can be efficiently probed through all of the allowed renormalizable ``portals'' (in the Higgs, vector, and neutrino sectors) at fixed target proton beam facilities, with complementary sensitivity to colliders. We concentrate on the kinetic-mixing vector portal, and show that certain regions of the parameter space for a new $\mathrm{U}(1{)}_{S}$ gauge sector with long-lived sub-GeV mass states decaying to standard model leptons are already severely constrained by the data sets at LSND, MiniBooNE, and NuMI/MINOS. Furthermore, scenarios in which portals allow access to stable neutral particles, such as MeV-scale dark matter, generally predict that the neutrino beam is accompanied by a ``dark matter beam,'' observable through neutral-current-like interactions in the detector. As a consequence, we show that the LSND electron recoil event sample currently provides the most stringent direct constraint on MeV-scale dark matter models.