Abstract
Massive neutrinos demand to ask whether they are Dirac or Majorana particles. Majorana neutrinos are an irrefutable proof of physics beyond the Standard Model. Neutrinoless double electron capture is not a process but a virtual ΔL = 2 mixing between a parent AZ atom and a daughter A(Z − 2) excited atom with two electron holes. As a mixing between two neutral atoms and the observable signal in terms of emitted two-hole X-rays, the strategy, experimental signature and background are different from neutrinoless double beta decay. The mixing is resonantly enhanced for almost degeneracy and, under these conditions, there is no irreducible background from the standard two-neutrino channel. We reconstruct the natural time history of a nominally stable parent atom since its production either by nature or in the laboratory. After the time periods of atom oscillations and the decay of the short-lived daughter atom, at observable times the relevant “stationary” states are the mixed metastable long-lived state and the non-orthogonal short-lived excited state, as well as the ground state of the daughter atom. We find that they have a natural population inversion which is most appropriate for exploiting the bosonic nature of the observed atomic transitions radiation. Among different observables of the atom Majorana mixing, we include the enhanced rate of stimulated X-ray emission from the long-lived metastable state by a high-intensity X-ray beam: a gain factor of 100 can be envisaged at current XFEL facilities. On the other hand, the historical population of the daughter atom ground state can be probed by exciting it with a current pulsed optical laser, showing the characteristic absorption lines: the whole population can be excited in a shorter time than typical pulse duration.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Super-Kamiokande collaboration, Y. Fukuda et al., Evidence for oscillation of atmospheric neutrinos, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81 (1998) 1562 [hep-ex/9807003] [INSPIRE].
SNO collaboration, Q.R. Ahmad et al., Direct evidence for neutrino flavor transformation from neutral current interactions in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 (2002) 011301 [nucl-ex/0204008] [INSPIRE].
M. Mezzetto Experimental outlook, in Neutrino 2016, July 4-9, London, U.K. (2016).
E. Majorana, Teoria simmetrica dell’elettrone e del positrone, Nuovo Cim. 14 (1937) 171 [INSPIRE].
S.M. Bilenky, J. Hosek and S.T. Petcov, On oscillations of neutrinos with Dirac and Majorana Masses, Phys. Lett. 94B (1980) 495 [INSPIRE].
M. Doi, T. Kotani, H. Nishiura, K. Okuda and E. Takasugi, CP violation in Majorana neutrinos, Phys. Lett. 102B (1981) 323 [INSPIRE].
J. Bernabéu and P. Pascual, CP properties of the leptonic sector for Majorana neutrinos, Nucl. Phys. B 228 (1983) 21 [INSPIRE].
C. Ryan and S. Okubo, On the equivalence of the Majorana and two-component theories of the neutrino, Nuovo Cim. Suppl. 2 (1964) 234.
K.M. Case, Reformulation of the Majorana theory of the neutrino, Phys. Rev. 107 (1957) 307 [INSPIRE].
GERDA collaboration, V. D’Andrea, Status Report of the GERDA Phase II Startup, arXiv:1604.05016 [INSPIRE].
KamLAND-Zen collaboration, A. Gando et al., Search for Majorana Neutrinos near the Inverted Mass Hierarchy Region with KamLAND-Zen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117 (2016) 082503 [arXiv:1605.02889] [INSPIRE].
F. Vissani, Signal of neutrinoless double beta decay, neutrino spectrum and oscillation scenarios, JHEP 06 (1999) 022 [hep-ph/9906525] [INSPIRE].
F. Feruglio, A. Strumia and F. Vissani, Neutrino oscillations and signals in beta and 0nu2beta experiments, Nucl. Phys. B 637 (2002) 345 [hep-ph/0201291] [INSPIRE].
F. Deppisch, Looking for lepton number violation, in Neutrino 2016, July 4-9, London, U.K. (2016).
S. Pascoli, A portal to new physics, CERN courier, July-August (2016).
S. Wren, Neutrino mass ordering studies with PINGU and IceCube/DeepCore, arXiv:1604.08807 [INSPIRE].
A. Kouchner, KM3NeT — ORCA: measuring the neutrino mass ordering in the Mediterranean, J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 718 (2016) 060230.
R.G. Winter, Double K capture and single K capture with positron emission, Phys. Rev. 100 (1955) 142 [INSPIRE].
R.A. Eramzhian, G. Mitselmakher and M.B. Voloshin, Conversion of an atomic electron into a positron and double beta+ decay, JETP Lett. 35 (1982) 656 [INSPIRE].
J. Bernabeu, A. De Rujula and C. Jarlskog, Neutrinoless double electron capture as a tool to measure the ν e mass, Nucl. Phys. B 223 (1983) 15 [INSPIRE].
S. Eliseev et al., Resonant enhancement of neutrinoless double-electron capture in Gd-152, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106 (2011) 052504 [INSPIRE].
J.L. Campbell and T. Papp, Widths of the atomic K-N 7 levels, Atom. Data Nucl. Data Tables 77 (2001) 1.
V.S. Kolhinen et al., Accurate Q value for the 74 Se double-electron-capture decay, Phys. Lett. B 684 (2010) 17 [INSPIRE].
A.S. Barabash, P. Hubert, A. Nachab and V. Umatov, Search for β + EC and ECEC processes in 74 Se, Nucl. Phys. A 785 (2007) 371 [hep-ex/0610046] [INSPIRE].
A.S. Barabash et al., Search for β + EC and ECEC processes in 112 Sn and β − β − decay of 124 Sn to the excited states of 124 Te, Nucl. Phys. A 807 (2008) 269 [arXiv:0804.3849] [INSPIRE].
S. Eliseev et al., Q values for neutrinoless double-electron capture in 96 Ru, 162 Er and 168 Yb, Phys. Rev. C 83 (2011) 038501 [INSPIRE].
V.S. Kolhinen et al., On the resonant neutrinoless double-electron-capture decay of 136 Ce, Phys. Lett. B 697 (2011) 116 [INSPIRE].
M. Goncharov et al., Probing the nuclides 102 Pd, 106 Cd and 144 Sm for resonant neutrinoless double-electron capture, Phys. Rev. C 84 (2011) 028501 [INSPIRE].
C. Droese et al., Probing the nuclide 180 W for neutrinoless double-electron capture exploration, Nucl. Phys. A 875 (2012) 1 [arXiv:1111.6377] [INSPIRE].
M.F. Kidd, J.H. Esterline and W. Tornow, Double-electron capture on 112 Sn to the excited 1871 keV state in 112 Cd: a possible alternative to double-beta decay, Phys. Rev. C 78 (2008) 035504 [INSPIRE].
A.S. Barabash, P. Hubert, A. Nachab, S.I. Konovalov and V. Umatov, Search for β + EC and ECEC processes in 112 Sn, Phys. Rev. C 80 (2009) 035501 [arXiv:0909.1177] [INSPIRE].
Z. Sujkowski and S. Wycech, Neutrinoless double electron capture: a tool to search for Majorana neutrinos, Phys. Rev. C 70 (2004) 052501 [hep-ph/0312040] [INSPIRE].
F. Simkovic and M.I. Krivoruchenko, Mixing of neutral atoms and lepton number oscillations, Phys. Part. Nucl. Lett. 6 (2009) 298.
J. Suhonen and M.T. Mustonen, Nuclear matrix elements for rare decays, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 64 (2010) 235 [INSPIRE].
M.I. Krivoruchenko, F. Simkovic, D. Frekers and A. Faessler, Resonance enhancement of neutrinoless double electron capture, Nucl. Phys. A 859 (2011) 140 [arXiv:1012.1204] [INSPIRE].
D.-L. Fang et al., Evaluation of the resonance enhancement effect in neutrinoless double-electron capture in 152 Gd, 164 Er and 180 W atoms, Phys. Rev. C 85 (2012) 035503 [arXiv:1111.6862] [INSPIRE].
T.R. Rodrıguez and G. Martínez-Pinedo, Calculation of nuclear matrix elements in neutrinoless double electron capture, Phys. Rev. C 85 (2012) 044310 [arXiv:1203.0989] [INSPIRE].
J. Suhonen, Nuclear matrix elements for the resonant neutrinoless double electron capture, Eur. Phys. J. A 48 (2012) 51 [INSPIRE].
J. Kotila, J. Barea and F. Iachello, Neutrinoless double-electron capture, Phys. Rev. C 89 (2014) 064319 [arXiv:1509.01927] [INSPIRE].
V. Weisskopf and E. Wigner, Over the natural line width in the radiation of the harmonius oscillator, Z. Phys. 65 (1930) 18 [INSPIRE].
A. Galindo and P. Pascual, Quantum mechanics, Springer, Germany (1990).
J. Bernabeu and M. Rosa-Clot, Dispersive approach to the nuclear Compton amplitude and exchange effects, Nuovo Cim. A 65 (1981) 87 [INSPIRE].
M. Ericson and M. Rosa-Clot, Compton scattering and pion number in nuclei, Phys. Lett. B 188 (1987) 11 [INSPIRE].
R.C. Hilborn, Einstein coefficients, cross sections, f values, dipole moments, and all that, physics/0202029. .
E. Schneidmiller and M. Yurkov, DESY note, private communication from M. Altarelli.
K. Yamauchi et al., Nanofocusing of X-ray free-electron lasers by grazing-incidence reflective optics, J. Synchrotron Rad. 22 (2015) 592.
H. Wallander and J. Wallentin, Simulated sample heating from a nanofocused X-ray beam, J. Synchrotron Rad. 24 (2017) 925.
P. Roedig et al., High-speed fixed-target serial virus crystallography, Nat. Meth. 14 (2017) 805.
E.A. Den Hartog and J.E. Lawler, Radiative lifetimes of neutral Samarium, J. Phys. B 46 (2013) 185001.
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
ArXiv ePrint: 1706.08328
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
About this article
Cite this article
Bernabéu, J., Segarra, A. Stimulated transitions in resonant atom Majorana mixing. J. High Energ. Phys. 2018, 17 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2018)017
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2018)017