Abstract
Sterile neutrinos are a minimal extension of the standard model of particle physics. A promising model-independent way to search for sterile neutrinos is via high-precision β-spectroscopy. The Karlsruhe tritium neutrino (KATRIN) experiment, equipped with a novel multi-pixel silicon drift detector focal plane array and read-out system, named the TRISTAN detector, has the potential to supersede the sensitivity of previous laboratory-based searches. In this work we present the characterization of the first silicon drift detector prototypes with electrons and we investigate the impact of uncertainties of the detector’s response to electrons on the final sterile neutrino sensitivity.
Highlights
Sterile neutrinos are a minimal extension of the Standard Model of Particle Physics
In this work we present the characterization of the first silicon drift detector prototypes with electrons and we investigate the impact of uncertainties of the detector’s response to electrons on the final sterile neutrino sensitivity
A novelty of the Tritium Investigations on Sterile-to-Active Neutrino Mixing (TRISTAN) detector system is the application of Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) to high-precision electron spectroscopy
Summary
Sterile neutrinos are a minimal extension of the Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM) [1]. These new neutrino particles can have an arbitrary mass scale ms and a small admixture of the active neutrino component, governed by the so-called mixing amplitude sin2(Θ) This mixing allows them to interact with matter via the weak interaction. Current x-ray data limit the mixing amplitude of sterile neutrinos to about sin2(Θ) < 10−11 – 10−7 in a mass range of 2 keV to 10 keV, respectively [8, 40].§ Below 2 keV mixing amplitudes above 10−6 are disfavoured as they would lead to an overproduction of sterile neutrino dark matter. These limits are rather modeldependent [10]. The impact of uncertainties in the electron-response model on the final sensitivity to sterile neutrinos is presented in sec. 5
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