Luminous solar neutrinos II: Mass-mixing portals

Abstract

Solar neutrinos can be efficiently upscattered to MeV scale heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) within the Earth's mantle. HNLs can then decay to electron-positron pairs leading to energy deposition inside large-volume detectors. In this paper we consider mass-portal upscattering of solar neutrinos to HNLs of mass 20 MeV $\ge m_N\ge 2m_e$. The large volume of the Earth compensates for the long decay-length of the HNLs leading to observable rates of $N\to {\nu }_{\alpha }{e}^{+}{e}^{-}$ in large volume detectors. We find that searches for mantle-upscattered HNLs can set the novel limits on mixing with third generation leptons, $|U_{\tau N}|$ for masses in the MeV regime; sensitivity to mixing with first- and second-generation leptons is not competitive with existing search strategies.

Comments: 5 pages, companion paper to arXiv:2010.04193 | Discussion of BBN constraints added, small cosmetic changes, typos corrected