Sensitivity to light sterile neutrino mixing parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA


Abstract in English

KM3NeT/ORCA is a next-generation neutrino telescope optimised for atmospheric neutrino oscillations studies. In this paper, the sensitivity of ORCA to the presence of a light sterile neutrino in a 3+1 model is presented. After three years of data taking, ORCA will be able to probe the active-sterile mixing angles $theta_{14}$, $theta_{24}$, $theta_{34}$ and the effective angle $theta_{mu e}$, over a broad range of mass squared difference $Delta m^2_{41} sim [10^{-5}, 10]$ $rm{eV}^2$, allowing to test the eV-mass sterile neutrino hypothesis as the origin of short baseline anomalies, as well as probing the hypothesis of a very light sterile neutrino, not yet constrained by cosmology. ORCA will be able to explore a relevant fraction of the parameter space not yet reached by present measurements.

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