Type: Article
Publication Date: 2017-12-11
Citations: 134
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.96.115007
In the presence of nonstandard neutrino interactions (NSI), oscillation data are affected by a degeneracy which allows the solar mixing angle to be in the second octant (also known as the dark side) and implies a sign flip of the atmospheric mass-squared difference. This leads to an ambiguity in the determination of the ordering of neutrino masses, one of the main goals of the current and future experimental neutrino program. We show that the recent observation of coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering by the COHERENT experiment, in combination with global oscillation data, excludes the NSI degeneracy at the $3.1\ensuremath{\sigma}$ ($3.6\ensuremath{\sigma}$) C.L. for NSI with up (down) quarks.