Oscillation Degeneracy from the New Physics of Non-Standard Neutrino Interactions
Warren Wright
Penn State
The standard theory describing neutrino oscillations only uses the interactions predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. However, there is plenty of room for non-standard interactions (NSI) to exist. This is because extra interactions are allowed by experimental error bars and even expected at some level from effective theory arguments. My research has been in examining the phenomenological consequences of the new physics of NSI at large atmospheric neutrino detectors like IceCube DeepCore. Of particular focus are the degeneracies between and within the standard neutrino oscillation parameters and the NSI parameters. These degeneracies will be explored both analytically and numerically, and strategies to lift them will also be discussed.