Resonant antineutrino induced electron capture with low energy bound-beta beams

TL;DR

This paper explores resonant antineutrino-induced electron capture using low-energy bound-beta beams, showing potential for high cross-sections and interaction rates with monochromatic antineutrinos in experimental setups.

Contribution

It calculates the cross-section for resonant antineutrino-induced electron capture and proposes an experimental setup with potential for high interaction rates using monochromatic antineutrino beams.

Findings

Cross-sections can be significantly larger than non-resonant processes.

Interaction rates depend on source-target distance and monochromaticity.

Potential for detecting interactions at high rates with precise energy matching.

Abstract

Antineutrino induced electron capture is a resonant process that can have a larg e cross-section for beams of monochromatic antineutrinos. We calculate the cross-section of this process and investigate an experimental setup where monochromatic antineutrinos are produced from the bound-beta decay of fully ionized radioactive atoms in a storage ring. If the energy between the source and the target is well matched, the cross-sections can be significantly larger than the cross-sections of commonly used non-resonant processes. The rate that can be achieved at a small distance between the source and two targets of $10^3$ kg is up to one interaction per $8 .3\cdot10^{18}$ decaying atoms. For a source-target distance corresponding to the first atmospheric neutrino osc illation maximum, the largest rate is one interaction per $3.2\cdot10^{21}$ decaying atoms, provided that extremely stringent monochromaticity conditions ($10^{-7}$ or better) are achieved in future ion beams.