New limits on radiative sterile neutrino decays from a search for single photons in neutrino interactions

It has been recently shown that excess events observed by the LSND and MiniBooNE neutrino experiments could be interpreted as a signal from the radiative decay of a heavy sterile neutrino _νh${\nu }_h$ produced in _νμ${\nu }_{\mu }$ neutral-current-like neutrino interactions. If the _νh${\nu }_h$ exist, it would be also produced by the _νμ${\nu }_{\mu }$ beam from the CERN SPS in the neutrino beam line shielding. The _νh${\nu }_h$?s would penetrate the shielding and be observed through the _νh→γν${\nu }_h\to \gamma \nu$ decay followed by the photon conversion into e⁺e⁻$e^{+}{e}^{-}$ pair in the active target of the NOMAD detector. The _νh${\nu }_h$?s could be also produced in the iron of the magnetic spectrometer of the CHORUS detector, located just in front of NOMAD. Considering these two sources of _νh${\nu }_h$?s we set new constraints on _νh${\nu }_h$ properties and exclude part of the LSND/MiniBooNE _νh${\nu }_h$ parameter space using bounds on single photons production in neutrino reactions recently reported by the NOMAD Collaboration. We find that broad bands in the parameter space are still open for more sensitive searches for the _νh${\nu }_h$ in future neutrino experiments.