Very Light Sterile Neutrinos at NOvA and T2K

Neutrinos are elusive particles with several outstanding questions such as: Why are they so light? What extension to the Standard Model can explain their mass? What role do they play in the matter-antimmater asymmetry in the observable universe? Another such question is whether neutrinos that don’t interact via the weak force exist. These particularly elusive neutrinos, called sterile neutrinos, could be responsible for some of the anomalies and discrepancies seen in experiments like MiniBooNE, LSND, and more recently the long-baseline experiments NOvA and T2K. We perform a hypothesis test to determine whether a very light sterile neutrino significantly eases the tension between the NOvA and T2K measurements. To carry out this test, we develop simulations that replicate the results from NOvA and T2K given their most recent data. We then perform a joint-fit to see how the sterile neutrino model performs. Although the results point at a sterile neutrino being unlikely, we can place new constraints on the sterile parameters.