Secret interactions of neutrinos with light gauge boson at the DUNE near detector

Understand

Secret interactions of neutrinos with light new gauge bosons, $Z^\prime$, can lead to a rich phenomenology in supernova explosion as well as in the early Universe.

• This interaction can also lead to new decay modes for charged mesons, $\pi^+ (K^+) \to e^+ \nu Z'$, and subsequently to $Z'\to \nu \bar{\nu}$.
• After demonstrating that such an interaction can be accommodated within viable electroweak symmetric models, we study how the near detector (ND) of DUNE can probe this scenario.
• We also discuss how the DUNE ND can make it possible to reconstruct the flavor structure of the $Z^\prime$ coupling to neutrinos.