Toward a Robust Confirmation or Refutation of the Sterile-Neutrino Explanation of Short-Baseline Anomalies

The sterile neutrino interpretation of the LSND and MiniBooNE neutrino anomalies is currently being tested at three liquid argon detectors: MicroBooNE, SBND, and ICARUS. It has been argued that a degeneracy between ν_{μ}→ν_{e} and ν_{e}→ν_{e} oscillations significantly degrades their sensitivity to sterile neutrinos. Through an independent study, we show two methods to eliminate this concern. First, we resolve this degeneracy by including external constraints on ν_{e} disappearance from the PROSPECT reactor experiment. Second, by properly analyzing the full three-dimensional parameter space, we demonstrate that the stronger-than-sensitivity exclusion from MicroBooNE alone already covers the entire 2σ preferred regions of MiniBooNE at the level of 2-3σ. We show that upcoming searches at SBND and ICARUS can improve on this beyond the 4σ level, thereby providing a rigorous test of short-baseline anomalies.