In the presence of transition magnetic moments between active and sterile neutrinos, the search for a Primakoff upscattering process at coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering ($\mathrm{CE}\nu \mathrm{NS}$) experiments can provide stringent constraints on the neutrino magnetic moment. We show that a radiative upscattering process with an emitted photon in the final state can induce a novel coincidence signal at $\mathrm{CE}\nu \mathrm{NS}$ experiments that can also probe neutrino transition magnetic moments beyond existing limits. Furthermore, the differential distributions for such a radiative mode can also potentially be sensitive to the Dirac vs Majorana nature of the sterile state mediating the process. This can provide valuable insights into the nature and mass generation mechanism of the light active neutrinos.

• Received 16 November 2021
• Accepted 10 August 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.106.035036

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

Published by the American Physical Society