Conditions for statistical determination of the neutrino mass spectrum in radiative emission of neutrino pairs in atoms

2016

The photon spectrum in macrocoherent atomic de-excitation via radiative emission of neutrino pairs (RENP) has been proposed as a sensitive probe of the neutrino mass spectrum, capable of competing with conventional neutrino experiments. In this paper we revisit this intriguing technique in order to quantify the requirements for statistical determination of some of the properties of the neutrino spectrum, in particular the neutrino mass scale and the mass ordering. Our results are sobering. We find that, even under ideal conditions, the determination of neutrino parameters needs experimental live times of the order of days to years for several laser frequencies, assuming a target of volume o…