Overview
- MicroBooNE reports no evidence of oscillations into a light sterile neutrino using two accelerator beams, excluding a single-state scenario at about 95% confidence.
- KATRIN’s precision tritium beta-decay study logged more than 36 million electrons and found no spectral signature consistent with sterile-neutrino emission.
- Both collaborations published their results in Nature, providing complementary null tests that constrain the simplest 3+1 model long invoked to explain LSND and MiniBooNE anomalies.
- Researchers describe the outcome as a turning point for neutrino physics, refocusing theory and experiment on alternative explanations and broader model spaces.
- Techniques and detector expertise from MicroBooNE will carry into next-generation efforts, including the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) and the Short Baseline program.