Constraint on Neutrino Decay with Medium-Baseline Reactor Neutrino Oscillation Experiments
Abstract
The experimental bound on lifetime of nu_3, the neutrino mass eigenstate with the smallest nu_e component, is much weaker than those of nu_1 and nu_2 by many orders of magnitude to which the astrophysical constraints apply. We argue that the future reactor neutrino oscillation experiments with medium-baseline (~ 50 km), such as JUNO or RENO-50, has the best chance of placing the most stringent constraint on nu_3 lifetime among all neutrino experiments which utilize the artificial source neutrinos. Assuming decay into invisible states, we show by a detailed chi^2 analysis that the nu_3 lifetime divided by its mass, tau_3/m_3, can be constrained to be tau_3/m_3 > 7.5 (5.5) x 10^{-11} s/eV at 95% (99%) C.L. by 100 kt.years exposure by JUNO. It may be further improved to the level comparable to the atmospheric neutrino bound by its longer run. We also discuss to what extent nu_3 decay affects mass-ordering determination and precision measurements of the mixing parameters.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1506.02314,
title = {Constraint on Neutrino Decay with Medium-Baseline Reactor Neutrino Oscillation Experiments},
author = {Thamys Abrahao and Hisakazu Minakata and Hiroshi Nunokawa and Alexander A. Quiroga},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.02314},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
23 pages, 6 figures, clarification of some discussions, added some references, no change in results and conclusions, version accepted for publication in JHEP