Combining dark matter detectors and electron-capture sources to hunt for new physics in the neutrino sector

TL;DR

This paper proposes using liquid xenon dark matter detectors combined with radioactive electron-capture sources to enhance sensitivity to new physics in the neutrino sector, such as magnetic moments and sterile neutrino oscillations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental approach leveraging existing dark matter detectors with radioactive sources to probe neutrino properties more effectively.

Findings

Potential to improve bounds on neutrino magnetic moments by an order of magnitude.

Ability to explore most of the gallium anomaly at 95% confidence level.

Demonstrates the feasibility of using liquid xenon detectors for neutrino physics beyond dark matter searches.

Abstract

In this letter we point out the possibility to study new physics in the neutrino sector using dark matter detectors based on liquid xenon. These are characterized by very good spatial resolution and extremely low thresholds for electron recoil energies. When combined with a radioactive $\nu_e$ source, both features in combination allow for a very competitive sensitivity to neutrino magnetic moments and sterile neutrino oscillations. We find that, for realistic values of detector size and source strength, the bound on the neutrino magnetic moment can be improved by an order of magnitude with respect to the present value. Regarding sterile neutrino searches, we find that most of the gallium anomaly could be explored at the 95% confidence level just using shape information.