English

Novel constraints on neutrino physics beyond the standard model from the CONUS experiment

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2022-05-24 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

The measurements of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEν\nuNS) experiments have opened up the possibility to constrain neutrino physics beyond the standard model of elementary particle physics. Furthermore, by considering neutrino-electron scattering in the keV-energy region, it is possible to set additional limits on new physics processes. Here, we present constraints that are derived from CONUS germanium data on beyond the standard model (BSM) processes like tensor and vector non-standard interactions (NSIs) in the neutrino-quark sector, as well as light vector and scalar mediators. Thanks to the realized low background levels in the CONUS experiment at ionization energies below 1 keV, we are able to set the world's best limits on tensor NSIs from CEν\nuNS and constrain the scale of corresponding new physics to lie above 360 GeV. For vector NSIs, the derived limits strongly depend on the assumed ionization quenching factor within the detector material, since small quenching factors largely suppress potential signals for both, the expected standard model CEν\nuNS process and the vector NSIs. Furthermore, competitive limits on scalar and vector mediators are obtained from the CEν\nuNS channel at reactor-site which allow to probe coupling constants as low as 51055\cdot10^{-5} of low mediator masses, assuming the currently favored quenching factor regime. The consideration of neutrino-electron scatterings allows to set even stronger constraints for mediator masses below 1\sim1 MeV and 10\sim 10 MeV for scalar and vector mediators, respectively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.02174,
  title  = {Novel constraints on neutrino physics beyond the standard model from the CONUS experiment},
  author = {CONUS Collaboration and H. Bonet and A. Bonhomme and C. Buck and K. Fülber and J. Hakenmüller and G. Heusser and T. Hugle and M. Lindner and W. Maneschg and T. Rink and H. Strecker and R. Wink},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.02174},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

35 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables; v2: Figure 2 and further references added, other CE$\nu$NS limits included in result plots, matches published version in JHEP