1. New limits on heavy sterile neutrino mixing inB8decay obtained with the Borexino detector
- Author
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A. M. Goretti, Aldo Ianni, Anton Empl, R. Tartaglia, S. V. Sukhotin, A. Wright, O. Zaimidoroga, A.V. Etenko, Jingke Xu, S. Schönert, Cristiano Galbiati, D. Bravo, V. V. Kobychev, E. V. Hungerford, C. Ghiano, Caren Hagner, P. Cavalcante, I. S. Drachnev, M. Misiaszek, W. Maneschg, P. J. Mosteiro, A. Sotnikov, Gioacchino Ranucci, Laura Cadonati, L. Papp, G. Bellini, D. Franco, M. D. Skorokhvatov, Michael Wurm, L. Grandi, Lothar Oberauer, Paolo Lombardi, Fausto Ortica, Matthias Laubenstein, B. Caccianiga, Andrea Ianni, D. Bick, Sandra Zavatarelli, Y. Suvorov, T. Lewke, D. Kryn, A. V. Derbin, F. Lombardi, Ben Loer, M. Obolensky, Q. Meindl, A. Razeto, G. Lukyanchenko, A. E. Chavarria, L. Perasso, S. Manecki, E. Meroni, M. Buizza Avanzini, V. N. Muratova, S. Gazzana, Lino Miramonti, S. Davini, G. Zuzel, E. Litvinovich, C. Salvo, G. Korga, K. Fomenko, D. Vignaud, N. Rossi, G. Manuzio, G. Bonfini, F. von Feilitzsch, Frank Calaprice, Hardy Simgen, R. Saldanha, J. Winter, M. Göger-Neff, Marco Giammarchi, A. Pocar, O. Smirnov, K. Otis, S. Perasso, M. M. Wojcik, Aldo Romani, Jay Burton Benziger, I. N. Machulin, Livia Ludhova, A. S. Chepurnov, Marco Pallavicini, D. D'Angelo, Denis Korablev, G. Testera, Alessandra Re, and R. B. Vogelaar
- Subjects
Physics ,Nuclear and High Energy Physics ,Particle physics ,Sterile neutrino ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,7. Clean energy ,01 natural sciences ,Side branch ,0103 physical sciences ,High Energy Physics::Experiment ,Heavy neutrino ,Neutrino ,010306 general physics ,Mixing (physics) ,Borexino - Abstract
If heavy neutrinos with mass ${m}_{{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{H}}\ensuremath{\ge}2{m}_{e}$ are produced in the Sun via the decay $^{8}\mathrm{B}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}^{8}\mathrm{Be}+{e}^{+}+{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{H}$ in a side branch of the $pp$ chain, they would undergo the observable decay into an electron, a positron and a light neutrino ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{H}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{L}+{e}^{+}+{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$. In the present work Borexino data are used to set a bound on the existence of such decays. We constrain the mixing of a heavy neutrino with mass $1.5\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}\ensuremath{\le}{m}_{{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{H}}\ensuremath{\le}14\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}$ to be $|{U}_{eH}{|}^{2}\ensuremath{\le}({10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}\ensuremath{-}4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}6})$, respectively. These are tighter limits on the mixing parameters than obtained in previous experiments at nuclear reactors and accelerators.
- Published
- 2013
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