Sensitivity to neutrino-antineutrino transitions for boron neutrinos

Abstract

Neutrino-antineutrino conversion is an important new physics process. The observation of this phenomenon could indicate total lepton number violation and potential CPT-violation. Searching for the appearance of electron antineutrinos from solar neutrinos from 8 B decay allows us to hunt for this rare process, although it can also be explained by other mechanisms or hypotheses. This analysis examines the capabilities of observing neutrino-antineutrino transition from 8 B unoscillated solar neutrinos using different liquid scintillator detector configurations. High energy reactor neutrinos and atmospheric neutrinos are the two dominant background sources. Large volume liquid scintillator detectors with deep underground shielding, placed far away from reactors and with capabilities of pulse shaped discrimination will significantly increase the search sensitivity. It is demonstrated that for the next generation of large liquid scintillator detectors being planned or under construction, the sensitivity to the average probability of neutrino-antineutrino transitions can reach 10 −6 , which is an order of magnitude better than the current best experimental limits.

Constraints on Decaying Sterile Neutrinos from Solar Antineutrinos

“…The increased detection efficiencies at lower energies, and reduced accidental and mis-reconstructed backgrounds will improve on the limits we set, being limited only by intrinsic reactor and atmospheric ν e backgrounds. Future large liquid-scintillator detectors, such as the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) [64] and the Jinping neutrino experiment [65], can also improve on current constraints with an expected threshold of E ν 8.5 MeV [66]. In the far future, observatories capable of accumulating larger numbers of DSNB events, such as the proposed detector THEIA [67], would play an important role in searching for solar antineutrinos.…”

Feasibility and physics potential of detecting 8B solar neutrinos at JUNO *

“…The solar metallicity problem [11,12] will profit from either precise measurements of the Be and B solar neutrino fluxes, or the observation of solar neutrinos from the CNO cycle. On the elementary particle side, validation tests of the large mix- ing angle (LMA) Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) [13,14] solution and the search for new physics beyond the standard scenario [15][16][17][18] constitute the main goals. The standard scenario of three neutrino mixing predicts a smooth upturn in the survival probability ( ) in the neutrino energy region between the high (MSW dominated) and low (vacuum dominated) ranges, and a sizable Day-Night asymmetry at the percentage level.…”