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Register a new userA New Method for Measuring Coherent Elastic Neutrino Nucleus Scattering at an Off-Axis High-Energy Neutrino Beam Target
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We present a new experimental method for measuring the process of Coherent Elastic Neutrino Nucleus Scattering (CENNS). This method uses a detector situated transverse to a high energy neutrino beam production target. This detector would be sensitive to the low energy neutrinos arising from pion decays-at-rest in the target. We discuss the physics motivation for making this measurement and outline the predicted backgrounds and sensitivities using this approach. We report a measurement of neutron backgrounds as found in an off-axis surface location of the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) target. The results indicate that the Fermilab BNB target is a favorable location for a CENNS experiment.
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The European Spallation Source (ESS), presently well on its way to completion, will soon provide the most intense neutron beams for multi-disciplinary science. Fortuitously, it will also generate the largest pulsed neutrino flux suitable for the detection of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CE$ u$NS), a process recently measured for the first time at ORNLs Spallation Neutron Source. We describe innovative detector technologies maximally able to profit from the order-of-magnitude increase in neutrino flux provided by the ESS, along with their sensitivity to a rich particle physics phenomenology accessible through high-statistics, precision CE$ u$NS measurements.
The coherent elastic scattering of neutrinos off nuclei has eluded detection for four decades, even though its predicted cross-section is the largest by far of all low-energy neutrino couplings. This mode of interaction provides new opportunities to
study neutrino properties, and leads to a miniaturization of detector size, with potential technological applications. We observe this process at a 6.7-sigma confidence level, using a low-background, 14.6-kg CsI[Na] scintillator exposed to the neutrino emissions from the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Characteristic signatures in energy and time, predicted by the Standard Model for this process, are observed in high signal-to-background conditions. Improved constraints on non-standard neutrino interactions with quarks are derived from this initial dataset.
We study the sensitivity of detectors with directional sensitivity to coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE$ u$NS), and how these detectors complement measurements of the nuclear recoil energy. We consider stopped pion and reactor neutrino sources, and use gaseous helium and fluorine as examples of detector material. We generate Standard Model predictions, and compare to scenarios that include new, light vector or scalar mediators. We show that directional detectors can provide valuable additional information in discerning new physics, and we identify prominent spectral features in both the angular and the recoil energy spectrum for light mediators, even for nuclear recoil energy thresholds as high as $sim 50$ keV. Combined with energy and timing information, directional information can play an important role in extracting new physics from CE$ u$NS experiments.
The prospects of extracting new physics signals in a coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE$ u$NS) process are limited by the precision with which the underlying nuclear structure physics, embedded in the weak nuclear form factor, is known. We present microscopic nuclear structure physics calculations of charge and weak nuclear form factors and CE$ u$NS cross sections on $^{12}$C, $^{16}$O, $^{40}$Ar, $^{56}$Fe and $^{208}$Pb nuclei. We obtain the proton and neutron densities, and charge and weak form factors by solving Hartree-Fock equations with a Skyrme (SkE2) nuclear potential. We validate our approach by comparing $^{208}$Pb and $^{40}$Ar charge form factor predictions with elastic electron scattering data. In view of the worldwide interest in liquid-argon based neutrino and dark matter experiments, we pay special attention to the $^{40}$Ar nucleus and make predictions for the $^{40}$Ar weak form factor and the CE$ u$NS cross sections. Furthermore, we attempt to gauge the level of theoretical uncertainty pertaining to the description of the $^{40}$Ar form factor and CE$ u$NS cross sections by comparing relative differences between recent microscopic nuclear theory and widely-used phenomenological form factor predictions. Future precision measurements of CE$ u$NS will potentially help in constraining these nuclear structure details that will in turn improve prospects of extracting new physics.
Muon-neutrino elastic scattering on electrons is an observable neutrino process whose cross section is precisely known. Consequently a measurement of this process in an accelerator-based $ u_mu$ beam can improve the knowledge of the absolute neutrino flux impinging upon the detector; typically this knowledge is limited to $sim$ 10% due to uncertainties in hadron production and focusing. We have isolated a sample of 135 $pm$ 17 neutrino-electron elastic scattering candidates in the segmented scintillator detector of MINERvA, after subtracting backgrounds and correcting for efficiency. We show how this sample can be used to reduce the total uncertainty on the NuMI $ u_mu$ flux from 9% to 6%. Our measurement provides a flux constraint that is useful to other experiments using the NuMI beam, and this technique is applicable to future neutrino beams operating at multi-GeV energies.
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