What causes the short-baseline neutrino anomalies?
In plain words
LSND and MiniBooNE saw extra electron-like events, and gallium detectors saw too few neutrino captures. These do not fit the three-neutrino picture.
Precise statement
Explain the LSND (1995) and MiniBooNE electron-like excesses and the gallium deficit in a single consistent framework, or show they have separate conventional origins. An answer is the mechanism (sterile oscillation, decaying heavy states, new interactions, or background and cross-section mismodeling) consistent with disappearance limits.
What would settle it
The Fermilab SBN program (SBND, MicroBooNE, ICARUS) measuring $\nu_e$ appearance and $\nu_\mu$ disappearance with one technology at several baselines.
Status in the literature
Unverified note: it names recent work and was partly written without a live literature search; it awaits a check by an editor.
MicroBooNE (Nature, December 2025) excludes a single light sterile neutrino explanation of LSND and MiniBooNE at 95 percent CL.
Problems built on this one
Special cases
- Does an eV-scale sterile neutrino exist? · open
- Why do gallium detectors see about 20 percent fewer neutrino captures? · open
- What is the source of the MiniBooNE low-energy excess? · open
Results
No results have been posted on this problem yet.
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