Description
The COHERENT experiment measures neutrino-induced recoils from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) with multiple nuclear targets at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), USA.
Three successful CEvNs measurements have been achieved in the recent years with tens-of-kg detector masses, with a CsI scintillating crystal; a liquid argon single-phase detector; and high-purity germanium spectrometers. For the next phase, COHERENT aims at high-statistics detection of CEvNS events for precision tests of the standard model of particle physics, and to probe new physics beyond the standard model.
Percent-level precision can be achieved by lowering thresholds, reducing backgrounds, and by scaling up the detector masses. Further detectors will measure CEvNS in additional nuclei, including lighter target nuclei such as sodium and neon, in order to continue to test the expected neutron-number-squared dependence of the cross section.
COHERENT can furthermore study charged-current and neutral-current inelastic neutrino-nucleus cross sections on various nuclei at neutrino energies below 50 MeV. Many of these cross sections have never been measured before, but are critical input for the interpretation of core-collapse supernova detection in multi-kton-scale experiments such as DUNE, Super-K and Hyper-K.
