Four-neutrino mixing and Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis

We investigate the Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis constraints on the elements of the neutrino mixing matrix which connect sterile with massive neutrino fields, in the framework of the two four-neutrino schemes that are favored by the results of neutrino oscillation experiments, We discuss the implications of these constraints for terrestrial short and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments and we present several possibilities of testing them in these experiments. In particular, we show that from the Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis constraints it follows that the ((-))nu(mu) --> ((-))nu(tau) transition is severely suppressed in short-baseline experiments, whereas its oscillation amplitude in long-baseline experiments is of order i. We also propose a new parameterization of the four-neutrino mixing matrix U which is appropriate for the schemes under consideration. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.