Speaker
Ryan Plestid
(University of Kentucky)
Description
Inelastic up-scattering of solar neutrinos during their passage through the earth can yield a flux of unstable right-handed neutrinos (RH$\nu$s) provided their mass is relatively light ($m<20$ MeV). These same particles can decay inside terrestrial detectors, producing visible signatures. For example if the up-scattering is mediated by a transition dipole operator the RH$\nu$ can deposit a $\sim$ few MeV photon inside the detector. Contrary to naive expectations, over a wide range of parameter space the rate is relatively insensitive to the decay length of the RH$\nu$, and can yield detectable signal rates orders of magnitude larger than direct detection via elastic scattering.
Primary author
Ryan Plestid
(University of Kentucky)