Sensitivity to light sterile neutrino mixing parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA

de Wasseige, Gwenhaël [UCL] Lamoureux, Mathieu [UCL] KM3NeT et al.

KM3NeT/ORCA is a next-generation neutrino telescope optimised for atmospheric neutrino oscillations studies. In this paper, the sensitivity of ORCA to the presence of a light sterile neutrino in a 3+1 model is presented. After three years of data taking, ORCA will be able to probe the active-sterile mixing angles θ$_{14}$, θ$_{24}$, θ$_{34}$ and the effective angle θ$_{μe}$, over a broad range of mass squared difference $ \Delta {m}_{41}^2 $ ∼ [10$^{−5}$, 10] eV$^{2}$, allowing to test the eV-mass sterile neutrino hypothesis as the origin of short baseline anomalies, as well as probing the hypothesis of a very light sterile neutrino, not yet constrained by cosmology. ORCA will be able to explore a relevant fraction of the parameter space not yet reached by present measurements.[graphic not available: see fulltext]