Sensitivity of next-generation tritium beta-decay experiments for keV-scale sterile neutrinos

Mertens S., Lasserre T., Groh S., Drexlin G., Glück F., Huber A., Poon A., Steidl M., Steinbrink N., Weinheimer C.

Abstract

We investigate the sensitivity of tritium β-decay experiments for keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Relic sterile neutrinos in the keV mass range can contribute both to the cold and warm dark matter content of the universe. This work shows that a large-scale tritium beta-decay experiment, similar to the KATRIN experiment that is under construction, can reach a statistical sensitivity of the active-sterile neutrino mixing of sin2θ ∼ 10-8. The effect of uncertainties in the known theoretical corrections to the tritium β-decay spectrum were investigated, and found not to affect the sensitivity significantly. It is demonstrated that controlling uncorrelated systematic effects will be one of the main challenges in such an experiment.