Sharpening New Physics Searches in Neutrino Oscillations with DUNE-PRISM

Abstract

Upcoming long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments such as DUNE aim to achieve unprecedented precision, but their physics reach is ultimately constrained by systematic uncertainties in neutrino flux predictions and neutrino-nucleus cross sections. These limitations are especially critical for new-physics searches in neutrino oscillations at the near detector, including non-unitarity and sterile neutrinos, where the signal manifests as small distortions in the energy spectrum and is therefore highly sensitive to spectral uncertainties. The PRISM (Precision Reaction Independent Spectrum Measurement) technique offers a robust strategy to mitigate these effects by exploiting measurements at multiple off-axis angles, effectively providing a data-driven handle to reduce systematics. In this work, we demonstrate that PRISM can significantly reduce the impact of large systematic uncertainties, restoring sensitivity to non-unitarity and sterile neutrino scenarios in the electron and muon sectors to a level comparable to that obtained with small spectral uncertainties. We also include the results for the $τ$ sector with PRISM; however, in this case, since the majority of the flux measured at off-axis angles lies below the $τ$ production threshold, we find the improvement to be marginal. As part of this work, we have obtained neutrino and antineutrino fluxes for different off-axis angles with higher statistics than those provided by the DUNE collaboration. We make available these fluxes as auxiliary material to this manuscript.