Sensitivity to light sterile neutrino mixing parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA

Abstract

KM3NeT/ORCA is a next-generation neutrino telescope optimised for atmospheric neutrino oscillations studies. In this paper, the sensitivity of ORCA to the presence of a light sterile neutrino in a 3+1 model is presented. After three years of data taking, ORCA will be able to probe the active-sterile mixing angles $\hat{I}{¸}_{14}$, $\hat{I}{¸}_{24}$, $\hat{I}{¸}_{34}$ and the effective angle $\hat{I}{¸}_{\hat{I}¼e}$, over a broad range of mass squared difference $\hat{I}”m_{41}^2\sim [10^{-5},10]$ ${\mathrm{eV}}^2$, allowing to test the eV-mass sterile neutrino hypothesis as the origin of short baseline anomalies, as well as probing the hypothesis of a very light sterile neutrino, not yet constrained by cosmology. ORCA will be able to explore a relevant fraction of the parameter space not yet reached by present measurements.