Combining LSND and atmospheric anomalies in a three-neutrino picture

Abstract

We investigate the three-neutrino mixing scheme for solving the atmospheric and LSND anomalies. We find the region in the parameter space that provides a good fit to the LSND and the SK atmospheric data, taking into account the CHOOZ constraint. We demonstrate that the goodness of this fit is comparable to that of the conventional fit to the solar and atmospheric data. Large values of the LSND angle are favored and sin²(2θ_LSND) can be as high as 0.1. This can have important effects on the atmospheric electron neutrino ratios as well as on down-going multi-GeV muon neutrino ratios. We examine the possibility of distinguishing this scheme from the conventional one at the long baseline experiments. We find that the number of electron neutrino events observed at the CERN to Gran Sasso experiment may lead us to identify the scheme, and hence the mass pattern of neutrinos.