Sensitivity to light sterile neutrino mixing parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA

• Published in: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Main Authors: Aiello, S., Bouwhuis, M., Bruijn, R., van Eeden, T., van Eijk, D., Heijboer, A., de Jong, M., de Jong, P., Jung, B.J., Kooijman, P., Melis, K., Muller, R., Ó Fearraigh, B.P., Samtleben, D.F.E., Seneca, J., de Wolf, E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Orca
• Online Access: https://dare.uva.nl/personal/pure/en/publications/sensitivity-to-light-sterile-neutrino-mixing-parameters-with-km3netorca(5cd71908-e271-405e-b034-00bfca35fa75).html; https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2021)180; https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/5cd71908-e271-405e-b034-00bfca35fa75; https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/67577248/Sensitivity_to_light_sterile_neutrino_mixing_parameters.pdf

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 θ 14, θ 24, θ 34 and the effective angle θ μe, over a broad range of mass squared difference Δm 2 41 ∼ [10 −5 , 10] 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.