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New limits on heavy sterile neutrino mixing in B8 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
  • , A. Chavarria
  • , A. Chepurnov
  • , D. D'Angelo
  • , S. Davini
  • , A. Derbin
  • , I. Drachnev
  • , A. Empl
  • , A. Etenko
  • , K. Fomenko
  • , D. Franco
  • C. Galbiati, S. Gazzana, C. Ghiano, M. Giammarchi, M. Göger-Neff, A. Goretti, L. Grandi, C. Hagner, E. Hungerford, Aldo Ianni, Andrea Ianni, V. Kobychev, D. Korablev, G. Korga, D. Kryn, M. Laubenstein, T. Lewke, E. Litvinovich, B. Loer, F. Lombardi, P. Lombardi, L. Ludhova, G. Lukyanchenko, I. Machulin, S. Manecki, W. Maneschg, G. Manuzio, Q. Meindl, E. Meroni, L. Miramonti, M. Misiaszek, P. Mosteiro, V. Muratova, L. Oberauer, M. Obolensky, F. Ortica, K. Otis, M. Pallavicini, L. Papp, L. Perasso, S. Perasso, A. Pocar, G. Ranucci, A. Razeto, A. Re, A. Romani, N. Rossi, R. Saldanha, C. Salvo, S. Schönert, H. Simgen, M. Skorokhvatov, O. Smirnov, A. Sotnikov, S. Sukhotin, Y. Suvorov, R. Tartaglia, G. Testera, D. Vignaud, R. B. Vogelaar, F. Von Feilitzsch, J. Winter, M. Wojcik, A. Wright, M. Wurm, J. Xu, O. Zaimidoroga, S. Zavatarelli, G. Zuzel
  • Dipartimento di Fisica
  • University of Milano
  • Princeton University
  • Institut für Experimentalphysik
  • Universität Hamburg
  • Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso
  • State University
  • Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
  • Department of Physics
  • UMass Amherst
  • Department of Physics
  • Princeton University
  • SINP MSU-Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics
  • Moscow State University
  • University of Houston
  • Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI)
  • Kurchatov Institute
  • Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna
  • Laboratoire de Probabilités et Modèles Aléatoires
  • Physik Department
  • Technical University of Munich
  • Institute of Nuclear Research, National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine
  • Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik
  • Università di Milano-Bicocca
  • M. Smoluchowski Institute of Physics
  • Jagiellonian University
  • Dipartimento di Chimica
  • INFN Sezione di Perugia
  • Department of Physics and Astronomy
  • University of California, Los Angeles

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

54 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

If heavy neutrinos with mass mνH≥2me are produced in the Sun via the decay B8→Be8+e+H in a side branch of the pp chain, they would undergo the observable decay into an electron, a positron and a light neutrino νH→ν 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≤mνH≤14 MeV to be |U eH|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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number072010
JournalPhysical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
Volume88
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Oct 2013
Externally publishedYes

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