Radiative Emission of Neutrino Pairs in Atoms and Light Sterile Neutrinos

Abstract

The process of Radiative Emission of Neutrino Pair (RENP) in atoms is sensitive to the absolute neutrino mass scale, the type of spectrum neutrino masses obey and the nature - Dirac or Majorana - of massive neutrinos. We analyse the possibility to test the hypothesis of existence of neutrinos with masses at the eV scale coupled to the electron in the weak charged lepton current in an RENP experiment. The presence of eV scale neutrinos in the neutrino mixing is associated with the existence of sterile neutrinos which mix with the active flavour neutrinos. At present there are a number of hints for active-sterile neutrino oscillations driven by $\Delta m^2 \sim 1~{\rm eV^2}$. We perform a detailed analysis of the RENP phenomenology within the "3 + 1" scheme with one sterile neutrino.