New limits on heavy sterile neutrino mixing in ${^{8}rm{B}}$-decay obtained with the Borexino detector


Abstract in English

If heavy neutrinos with mass $m_{ u_{H}}geq$2$ m_e $ are produced in the Sun via the decay ${^8rm{B}} rightarrow {^8rm{Be}} + e^+ + u_H$ in a side branch of pp-chain, they would undergo the observable decay into an electron, a positron and a light neutrino $ u_{H}rightarrow u_{L}+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 $leq m_{ u_{H}} le$ 14 MeV to be $|U_{eH}|^2leq (10^{-3}-4times10^{-6})$ respectively. These are tighter limits on the mixing parameters than obtained in previous experiments at nuclear reactors and accelerators.

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