Neutrino invisible decay at DUNE: a multi-channel analysis

Abstract The hypothesis of the decay of neutrino mass eigenstates leads to a substantial modification of the appearance and disappearance probabilities of flavor eigenstates. We investigate the impact on the standard oscillation scenario caused by the decay of the heaviest mass eigenstate ν 3 (with a mass m 3 and a mean life τ 3 ) to a sterile state in deep underground neutrino experiment. We find that the lower bound of 5.1 × 10 −11 s eV −1 at 90% confidence level on the decay parameter τ 3 / m 3 can be set if the neutral current data are included in the analysis, thus providing the best long-baseline expected limit so far. We also show that the ν τ appearance channel would give only a negligible contribution to the decay parameter constraints. Our numerical results are corroborated by analytical formulae for the appearance and disappearance probabilities in vacuum (which is a useful approximation for the study of the invisible decay model) that we have developed up to the second order in the solar mass splitting and to all orders in the decay factor t / τ 3 .