Detecting sterile neutrinos with KATRIN like experiments

Understand

A sterile neutrino with mass in the eV range, mixing with the electron antineutrino, is allowed and possibly even preferred by cosmology and oscillation experiments.

• If such eV-mass neutrinos exist they provide a much better target for direct detection in beta decay experiments than the active neutrinos which are expected to have sub-eV masses.
• Their relatively high mass would allow for an easy separation from the primary decay signal in experiments such as KATRIN.