Constraints on neutrino decay lifetime using long-baseline charged and neutral current data

Abstract

We investigate the status of a scenario involving oscillations and decay for charged and neutral current data from the MINOS and T2K experiments. We first present an analysis of charged current neutrino and anti-neutrino data from MINOS in the framework of oscillation with decay and obtain a best fit for non-zero decay parameter $α_3$. The MINOS charged and neutral current data analysis results in the best fit for $|Δm_{32}^2| = 2.34\times 10^{-3}$~eV$^2$, $\sin^2 θ_{23} = 0.60$ and zero decay parameter, which corresponds to the limit for standard oscillations. Our combined MINOS and T2K analysis reports a constraint at the 90\% confidence level for the neutrino decay lifetime $τ_3/m_3 > 2.8 \times 10^{-12}$~s/eV. This is the best limit based only on accelerator produced neutrinos.