Sensitivity of Next-Generation Tritium Beta-Decay Experiments for keV-Scale Sterile Neutrinos

Abstract

We investigate the sensitivity of tritium $\beta$-decay experiments for keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Relic sterile neutrinos in the keV mass range can contribute both to the cold and warm dark matter content of the universe. This work shows that a large-scale tritium beta-decay experiment, similar to the KATRIN experiment that is under construction, can reach a statistical sensitivity of the active-sterile neutrino mixing of ${\sin }^2\theta \sim 10^{-8}$. The effect of uncertainties in the known theoretical corrections to the tritium $\beta$-decay spectrum were investigated, and found not to affect the sensitivity significantly. It is demonstrated that controlling uncorrelated systematic effects will be one of the main challenges in such an experiment.

24 pages, 16 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Light Sterile Neutrinos: A White Paper
• Sterile neutrinos, dark matter, and the pulsar velocities in models with a Higgs singlet
• A lower bound on the mass of Dark Matter particles
• Sterile Neutrinos as the Origin of Dark and Baryonic Matter
• The velocity function in the local environment from LCDM and LWDM constrained simulations
• Resonantly-Produced 7 keV Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter Models and the Properties of Milky Way Satellites
• Constraints on decaying Dark Matter from XMM-Newton observations of M31
• The emptiness of voids: yet another over-abundance problem for the LCDM model
• Signatures of Extra Dimensional Sterile Neutrinos
• Exact relativistic beta decay endpoint spectrum
• Sterile neutrinos and right-handed currents in KATRIN
• Wavelet Approach to Search for Sterile Neutrinos in Tritium $\beta$-Decay Spectra
• Exact relativistic tritium beta-decay endpoint spectrum in a hadron model

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Physics potential of the International Axion Observatory (IAXO)
• Assessment of molecular effects on neutrino mass measurements from tritium beta decay
• Light Dark Matter from Inflaton Decay
• Characterization of a Silicon Drift Detector for High-Resolution Electron Spectroscopy
• Measurements with a TRISTAN prototype detector system at the "Troitsk nu-mass" experiment in integral and differential mode
• Impact of ADC non-linearities on the sensitivity to sterile keV neutrinos with a KATRIN-like experiment
• Digging into Axion Physics with (Baby)IAXO
• Warm dark matter sterile neutrinos in electron capture and beta decay spectra
• Searches for beyond-standard-model physics with astroparticle physics instruments
• Theoretical and phenomenological consequences of active and sterile neutrino within Beyond Standard Model framework