Searching for Novel Neutrino Interactions at NOvA and Beyond in Light of Large theta_13

Understand

We examine the prospects of probing nonstandard interactions (NSI) of neutrinos in the e-tau sector with upcoming long-baseline nu_mu -> nu_e oscillation experiments.

• First conjectured decades ago, neutrino NSI remain of great interest, especially in light of the recent 8B solar neutrino measurements by SNO, Super-Kamiokande, and Borexino.
• We observe that the recent discovery of large theta_13 implies that long-baseline experiments have considerable NSI sensitivity, thanks to the interference of the standard and new physics conversion amplitudes.
• In particular, in some parts of NSI parameter space, the upcoming NOvA experiment will be sensitive enough to see ~ 3sigma deviations from the SM-only hypothesis.