Study of light sterile neutrino at the long-baseline experiment options at KM3NeT

TL;DR

This study evaluates the sensitivity of various long-baseline neutrino experiments at KM3NeT to light sterile neutrinos, comparing their performance with DUNE and emphasizing the importance of near detectors.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of KM3NeT experiment options for sterile neutrino detection and highlights the impact of near detectors on sensitivity improvements.

Findings

P2SO sensitivity is comparable or better than DUNE.

Near detectors significantly enhance sterile neutrino sensitivity.

Sensitivity varies with the sterile neutrino mass-squared difference.

Abstract

In this paper, we study the capability of different long-baseline experiment options at the KM3NeT facility i.e., P2O, Upgraded P2O and P2SO to probe the light sterile neutrino and compare their sensitivities with DUNE. The P2O option will have neutrinos from a 90 KW beam at Protvino to be detected at the ORCA detector, the Upgraded P2O will have neutrinos from the upgraded 450 KW beam to be detected at the ORCA detector and the option P2SO will have neutrinos from a 450 KW beam to be detected at the upgraded Super-ORCA detector. All these options will have a baseline around 2595 km. Our results show that the experiments at the KM3NeT (DUNE) would be more sensitive if the value of $\Delta m^2_{41}$ is around 10 (1) eV$^2$. Our results also show that the role of near detector is very important for the study of sterile neutrinos and addition of near detector improves the sensitivity as compared to only far detector for 3+1 scenario. Among the three options at KM3NeT, the sensitivity of P2O and upgraded P2O is limited and sensitivity of P2SO is either comparable or better than DUNE.