Prospects for heavy neutral lepton searches at short and medium baseline reactor experiments

Abstract

Heavy neutrinos with masses in the MeV range can in principle simultaneously explain the light neutrino masses and the origin of baryonic matter in the universe. The strongest constraints on their properties come from their potential impact on the formation of light elements in the early universe. Since these constraints rely on assumptions about the cosmic history, independent checks in the laboratory are highly desirable. In this paper, we discuss the opportunity to search for heavy neutrinos within the MeV mass range in short and medium baseline reactor neutrino experiments, using the SoLid, JUNO and TAO experiments as examples. These experiments can give the currently strongest upper bound on the mixing between the light electron neutrinos and the heavy neutrino in the 2–9 MeV mass range.