https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-5656-9
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
keV-Scale sterile neutrino sensitivity estimation with time-of-flight spectroscopy in KATRIN using self-consistent approximate Monte Carlo
1
Institut für Kernphysik, WWU Münster, Wilhelm Klemm-Str. 9, 48149, Münster, Germany
2
Institute of Experimental Particle Physics (ETP), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Wolfgang Gaede-Str. 1, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany
3
Physics Department, TU München, James-Franck-Str. 1, 85748, Garching, Germany
* e-mail: n.steinbrink@uni-muenster.de
Received:
25
October
2017
Accepted:
19
February
2018
Published online:
13
March
2018
We investigate the sensitivity of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment (KATRIN) to keV-scale sterile neutrinos, which are promising dark matter candidates. Since the active-sterile mixing would lead to a second component in the tritium 
-spectrum with a weak relative intensity of order 
, additional experimental strategies are required to extract this small signature and to eliminate systematics. A possible strategy is to run the experiment in an alternative time-of-flight (TOF) mode, yielding differential TOF spectra in contrast to the integrating standard mode. In order to estimate the sensitivity from a reduced sample size, a new analysis method, called self-consistent approximate Monte Carlo (SCAMC), has been developed. The simulations show that an ideal TOF mode would be able to achieve a statistical sensitivity of 
at one 
, improving the standard mode by approximately a factor two. This relative benefit grows significantly if additional exemplary systematics are considered. A possible implementation of the TOF mode with existing hardware, called gated filtering, is investigated, which, however, comes at the price of a reduced average signal rate.
© The Author(s), 2018
