Searching for New Physics in Two-Neutrino Double Beta Decay

Abstract

Motivated by non-zero neutrino masses and the possibility of New Physics discovery, a number of experiments search for neutrinoless double beta decay. While hunting for this hypothetical nuclear process, a significant amount of two-neutrino double beta decay data has become available. Although these events are regarded and studied mostly as the background of neutrinoless double beta decay, they can be also used to probe physics beyond the Standard Model. In this paper we show how the presence of right-handed leptonic currents would affect the energy distribution and angular correlation of the outgoing electrons in two-neutrino double beta decay. Consequently, we estimate constraints imposed by currently available data on the existence of right-handed neutrino interactions without having to assume their nature. In this way our results complement the bounds coming from the non-observation of neutrinoless double beta decay as they limit also the exotic interactions of Dirac neutrinos. We perform a detailed calculation of two-neutrino double beta decay under the presence of exotic (axial-)vector currents and we demonstrate that current experimental searches can be competitive to existing limits.