Addressing the Majorana vs. Dirac Question Using Neutrino Decays

Abstract

We explain why it is so hard to determine whether neutrinos are Majorana or Dirac particles as long as the only neutrinos we study are ultra-relativistic. We then show how non-relativistic neutrinos could help, and focus on the angular distributions in the decays of an as-yet-to-be-discovered heavy neutrino $N$. We find that these angular distributions could very well tell us whether neutrinos are Majorana or Dirac particles.

Comments: 4 pages; to appear in the Proceedings of the 53rd Rencontres de Moriond Electroweak session of March 2018