Sensitivity to light sterile neutrino mixing parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA

Abstract

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] eV2, 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.

Publication
Journal of High Energy Physics