Probing New Physics with the Coherent Captain-Mills (CCM) Experiment

The MiniBooNE and LSND experiments have shown compelling
evidence for new physics in short baseline neutrino oscillation
experiments. In these experiments, an excess of electron-like events
was observed from an intense muon neutrino beam, and if these data are
interpreted as sterile neutrino oscillations, the mass scale is ~1
eV^2. Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills (CCM) is a new experiment designed to
search for muon neutrino disappearance at the LSND energy scale. CCM
will use a 10-ton liquid argon scintillation detector to leverage the
enhanced cross section from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus
scattering. CCM will operate at the LANSCE Lujan Center which is a
100-kW stopped pion source that delivers an 800-MeV proton beam onto a
tungsten target at 20 Hz with a short pulse width of 275 ns. This fast
pulsing is crucial for isolating the monoenergetic muon neutrino in
time and reducing neutron backgrounds. Furthermore, new vector portal
dark sector models predict beam dump experiments like CCM are
sensitive to sub-GeV dark matter production with sensitivities that
probe early Universe relic density limits. As well, recent
theoretical work has shown that the MiniBooNE excess can be explained
as ALP (Axion Like Particle) production in meson decays that can be
tested by CCM in the near future. In this talk, I will describe the
current status of the CCM experiment and results from the 2019
engineering run.