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Laboratory constraints on peV-scale mass splitting between ordinary and sterile neutron states

N. J. Ayres1, Z. Berezhiani2, G. Bison3, K. Bodek4, V. Bondar1, P.-J. Chiu1,3,*, M. Daum3, C. B. Doorenbos1,3, S. Emmenegger1 et al.

K. Kirch1,3, V. Kletzl1,3,†, J. Krempel1, B. Lauss3,‡, D. Pais1,3, I. Rienäcker3, D. Ries3, D. Rozpędzik4, P. Schmidt-Wellenburg3, K. S. Tanaka3,§, J. Zejma4, N. Ziehl1,∥, and G. Zsigmond3,¶

  • *Present address: Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, 106319 Taipei, Taiwan.
  • †Present address: Marietta-Blau-Institute for Particle Physics, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
  • ‡Contact author: bernhard.lauss@psi.ch
  • §Present address: Waseda University, 3-4-1 Ookubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan.
  • ∥Contact author: ziehln@phys.ethz.ch
  • Contact author: geza.zsigmond@psi.ch
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 072015 – Published 29 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/3kqg-c7bp

Abstract

Sterile states of matter, represented by a parallel “mirror” sector, may contribute to the observed dark matter in the Universe. We investigated the parameter space of neutron (n) to mirror-neutron (n′) oscillations, in the case where the two states are not necessarily mass degenerate, taking into account interactions in the mirror sector. By tuning the magnitude of an applied magnetic field in the range 5  μT<B<360  μT to corresponding resonance conditions for finite mass splitting, we derive exclusion limits for the n−n′ oscillation time constant reaching about 20 s over the mass-difference range 0.3−22  p eV. In parts of this parameter range, our limits exceed the model-dependent neutron-star-cooling bound, providing the first experimental constraints in this scenario that are more stringent than this astrophysical estimate.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 072015– Published 29 October, 2026
  • Received 23 June 2026
  • Accepted 2 October 2026
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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.

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