Wavelet approach to search for sterile neutrinos in tritium β -decay spectra

Mertens, S. and Dolde, K. and Korzeczek, M. and Glück, Ferenc and Groh, S. (2015) Wavelet approach to search for sterile neutrinos in tritium β -decay spectra. PHYSICAL REVIEW D, 91 (4). ISSN 2470-0010

Preview

Text 1410.7684.pdf Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (620kB) | Preview

Abstract

Sterile neutrinos in the mass range of a few keV are candidates for both cold and warm dark matter. An ad-mixture of a heavy neutrino mass eigenstate to the electron neutrino would result in a minuscule distortion - a ’kink’ - in a β-decay spectrum. In this paper we show that a wavelet transform is a very powerful shape analysis method to detect this signature. For a tritium source strength, similar to what is expected from the KATRIN experiment, a statistical sensitivity to active-to-sterile neutrino mixing down to sin2 θ = 10−6 (90% CL) can be obtained after 3 years of measurement time. It is demonstrated that the wavelet approach is largely insensitive to systematic effects that result in smooth spectral modifications. To make full use of this analysis technique a high resolution measurement (FWHM of ∼ 100 eV) of the tritium β-decay spectrum is required.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item