English

Neutrino mass from bremsstrahlung endpoint in coherent scattering on nuclei

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2019-01-15 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

We calculate the coherent bremsstrahlung process ν+NN+ν+γ\nu+{\cal N} \to {\cal N}+\nu+\gamma off a nucleus N{\cal N} with the aim of revealing the neutrino mass via the photon endpoint spectrum. Unfortunately, the large required power of a monochromatic neutrino source and/or large detector mass make it difficult to compete with traditional electron-spectrum endpoint measurements in nuclear β\beta decay. Our neutral-current process distinguishes between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos, but the change of the photon spectrum is of the order of mν/Eνm_\nu/E_\nu and thus very small, despite the final-state neutrino coming to rest at the photon endpoint. So the "Dirac-Majorana confusion theorem" remains intact even if EνmνE_\nu\gg m_\nu applies only for the initial state.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.06584,
  title  = {Neutrino mass from bremsstrahlung endpoint in coherent scattering on nuclei},
  author = {Alexander Millar and Georg Raffelt and Leo Stodolsky and Edoardo Vitagliano},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.06584},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

5 pages, 2 figures. v2: matches published version