Charged current cross section for massive cosmological neutrinos impinging on radioactive nuclei

TL;DR

This paper examines the cross section for massive cosmological neutrinos interacting with radioactive nuclei, highlighting the detection challenges and the importance of energy resolution for observing sub-eV neutrino masses.

Contribution

It provides a detailed formula for neutrino-nucleus cross sections considering neutrino mass and analyzes detection feasibility based on energy resolution.

Findings

Energy resolution below 0.5 eV is needed for sub-eV neutrino detection.

Non-resonant nature of neutrino capture on radioactive nuclei.

Signal to background ratio depends on neutrino mass over detector resolution.

Abstract

We discuss the cross section formula both for massless and massive neutrinos on stable and radioactive nuclei. The latter could be of interest for the detection of cosmological neutrinos whose observation is one of the main challenges of modern cosmology. We analyze the signal to background ratio as a function of the ratio of the neutrino mass over the detector resolution and show that an energy resolution less than 0.5 eV would be required for sub-eV neutrino masses, independently of the gravitational neutrino clustering. Finally we mention the non-resonant character of neutrino capture on radioactive nuclei.