Prospects for cosmic neutrino detection in tritium experiments in the case of hierarchical neutrino masses

Abstract

We discuss the effects of neutrino mixing and the neutrino mass hierarchy when considering the capture of the cosmic neutrino background (CNB) on radioactive nuclei. The implications of mixing and hierarchy at future generations of tritium decay experiments are considered. We find that the CNB should be detectable at these experiments provided that the resolution for the kinetic energy of the outgoing electron can be pushed to a few 0.01 eV for the scenario with inverted neutrino mass hierarchy, about an order of magnitude better than that of the upcoming KATRIN experiment. Another order of magnitude improvement is needed in the case of normal neutrino mass hierarchy. We also note that mixing effects generally make the prospects for CNB detection worse due to an increased maximum energy of the normal beta decay background.

arXiv comment12 pages, 4 figures, REVTeX4, minor updates, final version, to be published in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (10)

• Evidence for oscillation of atmospheric neutrinos
• Limits on Neutrino Oscillations from the CHOOZ Experiment
• Relic neutrino decoupling including flavour oscillations
• Status of global fits to neutrino oscillations
• Neutrinos in cosmology
• Gravitational clustering of relic neutrinos and implications for their detection
• Charged current cross section for massive cosmological neutrinos impinging on radioactive nuclei
• Prospect for relic neutrino searches
• PeV Cosmic Rays: A Window on the Leptonic Era?
• Detection of cosmic neutrino clustering by cosmic ray spectra

Cited by in corpus (36)

• Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter
• Flavor structures of charged fermions and massive neutrinos
• Neutrino Mass Ordering from Oscillations and Beyond: 2018 Status and Future Prospects
• Detecting non-relativistic cosmic neutrinos by capture on tritium: phenomenology and physics potential
• Neutrino physics from precision cosmology
• Prospects for the direct detection of the cosmic neutrino background
• Calculation of the local density of relic neutrinos
• Possible Capture of keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter on Radioactive beta-decaying Nuclei
• Cosmic Neutrino Background Detection in Large-Neutrino-Mass Cosmologies
• Direct Detection of the Cosmic Neutrino Background Including Light Sterile Neutrinos
• Relic Right-handed Dirac Neutrinos and Implications for Detection of Cosmic Neutrino Background
• CP violation effects on the neutrino degeneracy parameters in the Early Universe
• Low Energy Antineutrino Detection Using Neutrino Capture on EC Decaying Nuclei
• Sensitivity of Neutrino Mass Experiments to the Cosmic Neutrino Background
• Cosmic neutrino background search experiments as decaying dark matter detectors
• On the capture rates of big bang neutrinos by nuclei within the Dirac and Majorana hypotheses
• Discriminating between Thermal and Nonthermal Cosmic Relic Neutrinos through Annual Modulation at PTOLEMY
• Captures of Hot and Warm Sterile Antineutrino Dark Matter on EC-decaying Ho-163 Nuclei
• Cosmic Neutrino Last Scattering Surface
• The Cosmic Neutrino Background Anisotropy - Linear Theory
• Upper Limits on the Cosmic Neutrino Background from Cosmic Rays
• Relic neutrino detection through angular correlations in inverse $\beta$-decay
• A review of neutrino decoupling from the early universe to the current universe
• Unstable Cosmic Neutrino Capture
• Impact of Beyond the Standard Model Physics in the Detection of the Cosmic Neutrino Background
• Precise Capture Rates of Cosmic Neutrinos and Their Implications on Cosmology
• A Possible Detection of the Cosmic Antineutrino Background in the Presence of Flavor Effects
• Detection Prospects of the Cosmic Neutrino Background
• A New Era of Leptogenesis
• Can we use heavy nuclei to detect relic neutrinos?
• Helicity-changing Decays of Cosmological Relic Neutrinos
• The connection between cosmology and neutrino physics
• Direct detection of relic active and sterile neutrinos
• Laboratory tests for the cosmic neutrino background using beta-decaying nuclei
• Particle decays in the presence of a neutrino background
• Low energy neutrino scattering : from fundamental interaction studies to astrophysics