Probing invisible neutrino decay with KM3NeT/ORCA

Abstract

A bstract In the era of precision measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters, upcoming neutrino experiments will also be sensitive to physics beyond the Standard Model. KM3NeT/ORCA is a neutrino detector optimised for measuring atmospheric neutrinos from a few GeV to around 100 GeV. In this paper, the sensitivity of the KM3NeT/ORCA detector to neutrino decay has been explored. A three-flavour neutrino oscillation scenario, where the third neutrino mass state ν 3 decays into an invisible state, e.g. a sterile neutrino, is considered. We find that KM3NeT/ORCA would be sensitive to invisible neutrino decays with 1 /α 3 = τ 3 /m 3 &lt; 180 ps / eV at 90% confidence level, assuming true normal ordering. Finally, the impact of neutrino decay on the precision of KM3NeT/ORCA measurements for θ 23 , $$ \Delta {m}_{31}^2 $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>Δ</mml:mi> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>m</mml:mi> <mml:mn>31</mml:mn> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msubsup> </mml:math> and mass ordering have been studied. No significant effect of neutrino decay on the sensitivity to these measurements has been found.