The COHERENT collaboration operates an array of detectors in the ORNL Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) "Neutrino Alley" to search for coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CEvNS) and other low-energy rare scattering processes. Our goal is to precisely measure CEvNS (and other channels) to further understanding on a wide variety of questions in astro-, particle, and nuclear physics. We...
The νGeN project is aimed to study neutrino scattering at the close vicinity of the reactor core of Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP). Its main interests are connected with the detection of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEνNS) and the search for the magnetic moment of neutrino. The experimental setup is constructed under reactor unit #3 of KNPP at a distance of about 10 m from...
Dual-phase liquid xenon time projection chambers, like XENONnT, have leading sensitivities to rare particle interactions such as those expected from WIMP dark matter. With various detector upgrades, XENONnT will have improved sensitivity to low-energy interactions with signals as low as a single detected electron. This will allow XENONnT to detect Boron-8 solar neutrinos and neutrinos from...
Neutrino Nucleus Elastic scattering ($\nu A_{el}$) is a well understood Standard Model process. Experimental cross-sections are enhanced and yet complicated by quantum-mechanical coherency effects with their $q^2$ dependence. Positive measurements of $\nu A_{el}$ so far were achieved by the COHERENT experiment with stopped pion neutrinos ($E_{\nu}$<53 MeV). The TEXONO experiment is pursuing...
Low-energy neutrino processes are of great interest for modern physics. It is an inseparable part for understanding the Standard Model (for example, studying coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) on different nuclei) and the possible processes beyond it (like non-standard neutrino interactions or dark matter).
The main problem of simulating such processes is inconsistency of...
Coherent Captain Mills (CCM) is a 10-ton liquid argon scintillation detector located at the Lujan Neutron Science Center at Los Alamos. CCM searches for sterile neutrinos and dark matter generated from an 800 MeV proton beam. In this talk I will discuss CCM’s search for sub-GeV dark matter candidates including both vector portal and leptophobic dark matter as well as other dark sector...
Noble element detectors have an event-rate advantage in detecting low-energy CEvNS interactions. Existing argon and xenon detector technologies, however, have drawbacks that limit their applications in this field. CHILLAX is an effort to combine the advantages of a liquid argon target and a xenon-like performance in a single detector. In this talk, I will discuss the motivation for this unique...
We will present a discussion of a new detector technology, the “Snowball Chamber,” which is based on the phase transition (of liquid to solid) for metastable fluids. A water-based supercooled detector has great potential for dark matter, but here we will focus on neutrino physics, utilizing the CEνNS interaction on Oxygen. It is likely possible to reach operational conditions wherein such a...
BULLKID (Bulky and low-threshold kinetic inductance detectors) is an R&D project on an innovative cryogenic particle detector to search for low-energy nuclear recoils induced by neutrino coherent scattering or Dark Matter interactions. The detector unit consists of an array of 60 silicon absorbers of 0.3 g each sensed by phonon-mediated, microwave-multiplexed Kinetic Inductance Detectors. The...
In this talk, we will show the current status of the effort to install a Skipper Charge Coupled Device (Skipper-CCD) with single-electron resolution in the Atucha 2 power reactor (in Argentina) at approximately 12 meters from the center of the core. We will revisit the main components of the system and its performance at Fermilab before commissioning. The installation is taking place in the...
Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEνNS) offers a unique way to study neutrino properties and to search for new physics beyond the Standard Model. As neutrino sources, nuclear reactors deliver very intense fluxes which, combined to the high CEvNS cross-section, could potentially allow to perform precision physics with drastically smaller detectors.
For high statistics...
The MiniBooNE excess has been considered as a potential new physics signal, and various approaches including dark matter interpretations and neutrino-sector physics have been investigated to explain the excess. We revisit the dark matter interpretation, imagining the situation where dark matter emerges from the decays of charged mesons, and discuss a few plausible scenarios that are not in...
In light of the MiniBooNE anomaly, which exhibits a puzzling asymmetry in its excess events across the neutrino and antineutrino modes, and across the beam-target and beam-dump modes, I will motivate the searches for long-lived scalar particles and their associated gauge sector. These searches may be undertaken at the neutrino frontier experiments in order to test this solution to the...
As low-threshold dark matter detectors advance in development, they will become sensitive to recoils from solar neutrinos which opens up the possibility to explore neutrino properties. We predict the enhancement of the event rate of solar neutrino scattering due to Non-Standard interactions (NSIs) in low-threshold DM detectors, particularly Skipper-CCDs. We consider five categories of...
The nuclear recoil ionization efficiency or "quenching factor" (QF) plays a crucial role in low-threshold ionization type detectors aimed at detecting CE$\nu$NS and studying new physics through this channel. We present an improved model based on the integro-differential equation that describes the cascade process initiated by a nuclear recoil, which takes into account a more detailed modeling...
The effective Majorana neutrino magnetic moment detectable at a scattering experiment involves in reality a combination of fundamental transition magnetic moments (TMMs), CP violating phases and neutrino mixing parameters. Beyond the three neutrino picture, sterile neutrinos with keV-MeV masses and non-zero TMMs can also be probed through low-energy nuclear or electron recoil measurements. We...
We study inelastic neutrino-nucleus and dark matter(DM)-nucleus scattering using argon, cesium, and iodine target nuclei. We use Bigstick, a nuclear shell model code, to obtain the form factors of the nuclei. For the experiment setup (COHERENT and CCM) we estimate event rates for neutrino and dark matter scattering processes. Lastly we estimate cross-section and event rates of the inclusive...
Exploring coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering with NUCLEUS
Coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) offers a unique way to study neutrino properties and to search for new physics beyond the Standard Model. The NUCLEUS experiment aims to measure CE$\nu$NS with reactor anti-neutrinos down to unprecedented low nuclear recoil energies. NUCLEUS will make use of CaWO$_4$ and...
The detection of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CEʋNS) represents an experimental challenge because of its unique signature: a nuclear recoil with low energy in range of 10 to 100 eV on average.
This process, largely unexplored until today, could probe physics beyond the Standard Model such as non-standard neutrino interactions and electromagnetic form factors.
NUCLEUS is a...
The NUCLEUS experiment aims to measure coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering of reactor anti-neutrinos using cryogenic calorimeters. Operating at an overburden of 3m.w.e., muon-induced backgrounds are expected to be dominant. For this reason, an efficient muon veto with a muon detection efficiency of more than 99% is indispensable and shall be achieved in NUCLEUS with a compact cube...
The development of low-threshold detectors for the study of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering and for the search for light dark matter necessitates methods of low-energy calibration. We suggest this can be provided by the nuclear recoils resulting from the gamma emission following thermal neutron capture [1]. In particular, several MeV-scale single-gamma transitions induce...
BULLKID is an R&D project which investigates a way of increasing the active volume of cryogenic detectors.
Several cubic silicon absorbers are carved in a 5 mm thick 3-inch diameter wafer. An array of multiplexed Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs) senses the cubes with one KID per cube. When a particle interacts in the silicon it produces phonons which are then detected by the KID. The...
As part of the effort to observe and measure the cross-section of the CEvNS interaction, a single-phase liquid argon detector, COH-Ar-10, was deployed to the SNS in Fall 2016 by the COHERENT Collaboration. The 24kg fiducial volume target recently made the first low-N measurement of CEvNS in Spring 2020. The data used to make this measurement encompassed a year and a half of operation between...
