Journal Article

Search for keV-scale sterile neutrinos with the first KATRIN data

Priester, F., Schlüter, L., Salomon, R., Lehnert, B., Brunst, T., Krause, H., Poyato, J. M. L., Böttcher, M., Mark, M., Siegmann, D., Marsteller, A., Rodenbeck, C., Saenz, A., Kellerer, J., Debowski, K., Röllig, M., Caldwell, T. S., Urban, K., Gumbsheimer, R., Slezák, M., Ellinger, E., Enomoto, S., Kleifges, M., Fränkle, F. M., Lebeda, O., Wüstling, S., Karl, C., Höhn, T., Melzer, C., Le, T. L., Lokhov, A., Drexlin, G., Malcherek, E., Huber, A., Dragoun, O., Franklin, G. B., Batzler, D., Bornschein, L., Hinz, D., Gavin, A. S., Oelpmann, P., Spanier, F., Vénos, D., Grössle, R., Block, F., Telle, H. H., Schlösser, K., Hickford, S., Machatschek, M., Wolf, J., Glück, F., Steidl, M., Chilingaryan, S., Schimpf, L., Mertens, S., Xu, W., Köhler, C., Mostafa, J., Barrero, D. Díaz, Choi, W., Sibille, V., Descher, M., Felden, A., Thümmler, T., Bornschein, B., Fulst, A., Lasserre, T., Šefǧík, M., Berlev, A., Eitel, K., Schrank, M., Parno, D. S., Welte, S., Wetter, M., Zeller, G., Schlösser, M., Rodejohann, W., Titov, N., Helbing, K., Hillesheimer, D., Wilkerson, J. F., Schäfer, P., Klein, M., Hernández, A. P. Vizcaya, Ramachandran, S., Korzeczek, M., Ryšavý, M., La Ca

2023

Overview

In this work we present a keV-scale sterile-neutrino search with a low-tritium-activity data set of the KATRIN experiment, acquired in a commissioning run in 2018. KATRIN performs a spectroscopic measurement of the tritium β -decay spectrum with the main goal of directly determining the effective electron anti-neutrino mass. During this commissioning phase a lower tritium activity facilitated the measurement of a wider part of the tritium spectrum and thus the search for sterile neutrinos with a mass of up to 1.6 keV . We do not find a signal and set an exclusion limit on the sterile-to-active mixing amplitude of sin 2 θ < 5 × 10 - 4 ( 95 % C.L.) at a mass of 0.3 keV. This result improves current laboratory-based bounds in the sterile-neutrino mass range between 0.1 and 1.0 keV.

• Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg,Springer,Springer Nature B.V,Springer Verlag (Germany),Springer Nature,SpringerOpen
• Subject: Astronomy / Astrophysics / Astrophysics and Cosmology / Beta decay / Commissioning / Dark matter / Elementary Particles / Experiments / Hadrons / Heavy Ions / Laboratories / Measurement Science and Instrumentation / Neutrinos / Nuclear Energy / Nuclear Experiment / Nuclear Physics / Nuclear reactors / Particle physics / Physics / Physics and Astronomy / Quantum Field Theories / Quantum Field Theory / Regular Article - Experimental Physics / Searching / String Theory / Tritium / Universe