Constraining sterile neutrinos with a low energy beta-beam

摘要

We show that a low energy beta-beam facility can be used to search for sterile neutrinos by measuring the disappearance of electron anti-neutrinos. This channel is particularly sensitive since it allows to use inverse beta decay as detection reaction; thus it is free from hadronic uncertainties, provided the neutrino energy is below the pion production threshold. This corresponds to a choice of the Lorentz γ ≃ 30 for the 6He parent ion. Moreover, a disappearance measurement allows the constraint of sterile neutrino properties independently of any CP violating effects. A moderate detector size of a few 100 tons and ion production rates of ∼2 · 1013 s−1 are sufficient to constrain mixing angles as small as sin2 2θ = 10−2 at 99% confidence level.