Invisible decay of solar neutrinos at dark matter experiments

Abstract

The combination of the long baseline and characteristic energies of solar neutrinos offers an ideal framework to probe invisible neutrino decay. In this work we present the first constraint on invisible solar-neutrino decay using coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, recently observed in dark matter direct detection experiments. Through a combined analysis of nuclear-recoil data from XENONnT, PandaX-4T, and LUX-ZEPLIN, we constrain the lifetime of the neutrino mass state ν 2, obtaining a bound already comparable in strength to that from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. We further evaluate the sensitivity that could be reached by a future xenon-based dark matter detector. For this projection, we extend the analysis to electronic-recoil data, estimating the impact of detecting lower-energy solar neutrinos from the pp-chain via elastic scattering off electrons. This channel would allow us to place strong constraints on the lifetimes of both the ν 1 and ν 2 mass eigenstates. Our results show that, with nominal future exposures, nuclear-recoil data would improve the current bound by about one order of magnitude, while electronic-recoil data would open a new detection channel for low-energy solar neutrinos, surpassing existing dedicated solar-neutrino bounds by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude.