Sensitivity to light sterile neutrino mixing parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA

TL;DR

This paper evaluates KM3NeT/ORCA's potential to detect or constrain light sterile neutrinos by analyzing its sensitivity to mixing parameters over a broad mass squared difference range, enhancing current experimental limits.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed sensitivity study of KM3NeT/ORCA to light sterile neutrinos in a 3+1 model, covering a wide parameter space after three years of data collection.

Findings

ORCA can probe active-sterile mixing angles over a broad Δm² range.

It can test the eV-mass sterile neutrino hypothesis.

It explores parameter space not yet constrained by existing experiments.

Abstract

KM3NeT/ORCA is a next-generation neutrino telescope optimised for atmospheric neutrino oscillations studies. In this paper, the sensitivity of ORCA to the presence of a light sterile neutrino in a 3+1 model is presented. After three years of data taking, ORCA will be able to probe the active-sterile mixing angles $\theta_{14}$, $\theta_{24}$, $\theta_{34}$ and the effective angle $\theta_{\mu e}$, over a broad range of mass squared difference $\Delta m^2_{41} \sim [10^{-5}, 10]$ $\rm{eV}^2$, allowing to test the eV-mass sterile neutrino hypothesis as the origin of short baseline anomalies, as well as probing the hypothesis of a very light sterile neutrino, not yet constrained by cosmology. ORCA will be able to explore a relevant fraction of the parameter space not yet reached by present measurements.