Probing eV-scale sterile neutrinos with neutrinoless double-beta decay and beta decay
Abstract
An eV-scale sterile Majorana neutrino can suppress neutrinoless double-beta decay through destructive interference with the active-neutrino contribution, weakening the resulting constraints on sterile-neutrino parameters. We investigate how complementary beta-decay information restricts this cancellation in the 3+1 framework. Using updated oscillation parameters that include the first JUNO results, we determine the allowed sterile-neutrino mass and mixing regions for both normal and inverted ordering. We show that an upper limit on the effective beta-decay mass mβ of the three light neutrinos strengthens the constraints from neutrinoless double-beta decay alone. The beta-decay bound restricts the light-neutrino masses and hence the cancellation between the active and sterile contributions to mββ. We derive analytic expressions for the resulting boundaries and use complex-plane geometry to explain the allowed values of the sterile Majorana phase α4 for a finite |mββ| limit. For the mixing considered, normal ordering allows a broad range of α4 at small sterile masses, whereas inverted ordering favors values near π. The allowed phase range narrows as the sterile mass approaches its upper bound or the limit on |mββ| becomes more stringent.
Related
- Partially Thermalized eV-Scale Sterile Neutrinos in Dynamical Dark Energy and Non-Flat Cosmologies
- Relic Neutrinos Probing Small Scale Primordial Non-Gaussianity
- Probing TeV-scale Majorana neutrinos at a muon-proton collider via a lepton-number-violating fat-jet signature
- Probing TeV-scale Majorana neutrinos at a muon-proton collider via a lepton-number-violating fat-jet signature
- Sensitivities of long and medium baseline experiments to sterile neutrinos and non-standard interactions
BibTeX
@misc{yang2026probing,
title = {{Probing eV-scale sterile neutrinos with neutrinoless double-beta decay and beta decay}},
author = {Ruisha Yang and Jiajun Liao},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.15060},
eprint = {2610.15060},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.15060},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Probing eV-scale sterile neutrinos with neutrinoless double-beta decay and beta decay
AU - Ruisha Yang
AU - Jiajun Liao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/10
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.15060
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.15060
AB - An eV-scale sterile Majorana neutrino can suppress neutrinoless double-beta decay through destructive interference with the active-neutrino contribution, weakening the resulting constraints on sterile-neutrino parameters. We investigate how complementary beta-decay information restricts this cancellation in the 3+1 framework. Using updated oscillation parameters that include the first JUNO results, we determine the allowed sterile-neutrino mass and mixing regions for both normal and inverted ordering. We show that an upper limit on the effective beta-decay mass m_β of the three light neutrinos strengthens the constraints from neutrinoless double-beta decay alone. The beta-decay bound restricts the light-neutrino masses and hence the cancellation between the active and sterile contributions to m_ββ. We derive analytic expressions for the resulting boundaries and use complex-plane geometry to explain the allowed values of the sterile Majorana phase α_4 for a finite |m_ββ| limit. For the mixing considered, normal ordering allows a broad range of α_4 at small sterile masses, whereas inverted ordering favors values near π. The allowed phase range narrows as the sterile mass approaches its upper bound or the limit on |m_ββ| becomes more stringent.
ER -