The Heavy Sterile Neutrino and a Method of Sampling the Beta-Decay of Strontium-90 and Yttrium-90

The Heavy Sterile Neutrino remains an elusive answer to our understanding of dark matter. This thesis describes a method of searching for the Heavy Sterile Neutrino emitted in nuclear beta decay. The experiment consists of using a long-lasting Strontium-90 source to achieve a constant decay of Yttrium-90 that fires into a silicon detector and is swept with a magnetic field to construct a spectrum and observe abnormalities from the expected spectrum. Using a Monte Carlo sampling of the beta decay of Yttrium-90, we will explore the possible branching ratios in which the Heavy Sterile Neutrino may live. We use a cumulative distribution function and normalize it to construct a model of the beta decay spectrums of Strontium-90 and Yttrium-90 and then use a likelihood function to determine the probable energy ranges in which the emission of the Heavy Sterile Neutrino might be found. Our Monte Carlo hypothesizes that the branching ratio of Yttrium-90 that may contain the Heavy Sterile Neutrino lies between 10^-4 and 10^-6! Notably, the presence of a Sterile Neutrino branch will distort the expected spectrum in a way that depends on the mass of the Heavy Sterile Neutrino. The goal of this expirement is to push the bounds of our current understanding of the Heavy Sterile Neutrino.