Experimental method of detecting relic neutrino by atomic de-excitation

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experimental method to detect relic neutrinos by observing atomic de-excitation, focusing on how cosmic neutrino background influences photon emission spectra and how this can reveal neutrino properties.

Contribution

It introduces a quantitative approach to detect relic neutrinos via atomic de-excitation and analyzes the impact of cosmic neutrino background on emission spectra.

Findings

Pauli blocking distorts photon energy spectrum

Sensitivity to neutrino temperature and chemical potential

Atomic level spacing and neutrino mass are crucial factors

Abstract

The cosmic background neutrino of temperature 1.9 K affects rates of radiative emission of neutrino pair (RENP) from metastable excited atoms, since its presence blocks the pair emission by the Pauli exclusion principle. We quantitatively investigate how the Pauli blocking distorts the photon energy spectrum and calculate its sensitivity to cosmic parameters such as the neutrino temperature and its chemical potential. Important quantities for high sensitivities to these parameter measurement are found to be the level spacing of atomic de-excitation and the unknown mass value of lightest neutrino, in particular their mutual relation.