Improved constraints on sterile neutrino mixing from disappearance searches in the MINOS+Daya Bay, and Bugey-3 experiments

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 MINOSþ 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 θμe mixing angle are derived that constitute the most constraining limits to date over five orders of magnitude in the mass-squared splitting Δm2 41, excluding the 90% C.L. sterile-neutrino parameter space allowed by the LSND and MiniBooNE observations at 90% CLs for Δm2 41 < 13 eV2 . Furthermore, the LSND and MiniBooNE 99% C.L. allowed regions are excluded at 99% CLs for Δm2 41 < 1.6 eV2.