Constraining sterile neutrinos with a low energy beta-beam

We show that a low energy beta-beam facility can be used to search for sterile neutrinos by measuring the disappearance of electron anti-neutrinos. This channel is particularly sensitive since it allows to use inverse beta decay as detection reaction; thus it is free from hadronic uncertainties, provided the neutrino energy is below the pion production threshold. This corresponds to a choice of the Lorentz gamma similar or equal to 30 for the 6 He parent ion. Moreover, a disappearance measurement allows the constraint of sterile neutrino properties independently of any CP violating effects. A moderate detector size of a few 100 tons and ion production rates of similar to 2 center dot 10(13) s(-1) are sufficient to constrain mixing angles as small as sin(2)2 theta = 10(-2) at 99% confidence level.