Abstract
In the era of precision measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters, upcoming neutrino experiments will also be sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. KM3NeT/ORCA is a neutrino detector optimised for measuring atmospheric neutrinos from a few GeV to around 100 GeV. In this paper, the sensitivity of the KM3NeT/ORCA detector to neutrino decay has been explored. A three-flavour neutrino oscillation scenario, where the third neutrino mass state ν3 decays into an invisible state, e.g. a sterile neutrino, is considered. We find that KM3NeT/ORCA would be sensitive to invisible neutrino decays with 1/α3 = τ3/m3 < 180 ps/eV at 90% confidence level, assuming true normal ordering. Finally, the impact of neutrino decay on the precision of KM3NeT/ORCA measurements for θ23, \( \Delta {m}_{31}^2 \) and mass ordering have been studied. No significant effect of neutrino decay on the sensitivity to these measurements has been found.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the financial support of the funding agencies: Agence Nationale de la Recherche (contract ANR-15-CE31-0020), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Commission Européenne (FEDER fund and Marie Curie Program), LabEx UnivEarthS (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-18-IDEX-0001), Paris Île-de-France Region, France; The General Secretariat of Research and Innovation (GSRI), Greece Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MIUR), PRIN 2017 program (Grant NAT-NET 2017W4HA7S) Italy; Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation, Morocco, and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Kuwait; Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; The National Science Centre, Poland (2021/41/N/ST2/01177); National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; Grants PID2021-124591NB-C41, -C42, -C43 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and, as appropriate, by “ERDF A way of making Europe”, by the “European Union” or by the “European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR”, Programa de Planes Complementarios I+D+I (refs. ASFAE/2022/023, ASFAE/2022/014), Programa Prometeo (PROMETEO/2020/019) and GenT (refs. CIDEGENT/2018/034, /2019/043, /2020/049. /2021/23) of the Generalitat Valenciana, Junta de Andalucía (ref. SOMM17/6104/UGR, P18-FR-5057), EU: MSC program (ref. 101025085), Programa María Zambrano (Spanish Ministry of Universities, funded by the European Union, NextGenerationEU), Spain.
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The KM3NeT collaboration., Aiello, S., Albert, A. et al. Probing invisible neutrino decay with KM3NeT/ORCA. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 90 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2023)090
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2023)090