New limits on heavy sterile neutrino mixing in<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">B</mml:mi><mml:mprescripts /><mml:none /><mml:mn>8</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math>decay obtained with the Borexino detector

G. Bellini, J. Benziger, D. Bick, G. Bonfini, D. Bravo, M. Buizza Avanzini, B. Caccianiga, L. Cadonati, F. Calaprice, P. Cavalcante

Abstract

If heavy neutrinos with mass mνH≥2me are produced in the Sun via the decay B8→Be8+e++νH in a side branch of the pp chain, they would undergo the observable decay into an electron, a positron and a light neutrino νH→νL+e++e−. In the present work Borexino data are used to set a bound on the existence of such decays. We constrain the mixing of a heavy neutrino with mass 1.5 MeV≤mνH≤14 MeV to be |UeH|2≤(10−3−4×10−6), respectively. These are tighter limits on the mixing parameters than obtained in previous experiments at nuclear reactors and accelerators.Received 27 May 2013DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.88.072010© 2013 American Physical Society

Locations

• Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D, Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology - View
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