KATRIN Sensitivity to Sterile Neutrino Mass in the Shadow of Lightest Neutrino Mass

Abstract

The presence of light sterile neutrinos would strongly modify the energy spectrum of the Tritium \beta-electrons. We perform an analysis of the KATRIN experiment's sensitivity by scanning almost all the allowed region of neutrino mass-squared difference and mixing angles of the 3+1 scenario. We consider the effect of the unknown absolute mass scale of active neutrinos on the sensitivity of KATRIN to the sterile neutrino mass. We show that after 3 years of data-taking, the KATRIN experiment can be sensitive to mixing angles as small as sin^2 (2\theta_s) ~ 10^-2. Particularly we show that for small mixing angles, sin^2 (2\theta_s) < 0.1, the KATRIN experiment can gives the strongest limit on active-sterile mass-squared difference.