Neutrino Decay and Solar Neutrino Seasonal Effect

TL;DR

This paper investigates how solar neutrino decay affects observed seasonal variations, establishing new bounds on neutrino lifetime and suggesting seasonal data can provide additional insights into neutrino properties.

Contribution

It introduces a new lower bound on the neutrino lifetime and explores the potential of seasonal variations to inform neutrino decay characteristics.

Findings

New lower bound on $ u_2$ lifetime: $ au_2 / m_2 \\geq 7.2 \times 10^{-4}$ s/eV.

Seasonal variations can offer additional information about neutrino decay.

Neutrino decay effects are sub-leading but detectable with current data.

Abstract

We consider the possibility of solar neutrino decay as a sub-leading effect on their propagation between production and detection. Using current oscillation data, we set a new lower bound to the $\nu_2$ neutrino lifetime at $\tau_2\, /\, m_2 \geq 7.2 \times 10^{-4}\,\,\hbox{s}\,.\,\hbox{eV}^{-1}$ at $99\%\,$C.L.. Also, we show how seasonal variations in the solar neutrino data can give interesting additional information about neutrino lifetime.