Reactor neutrino liquid xenon coherent elastic scattering experiment
Abstract
Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) provides a unique probe for neutrino properties Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics. REactor neutrino LIquid xenon Coherent Scattering experiment (RELICS), a proposed reactor neutrino program using liquid xenon time projection chamber (LXeTPC) technology, aims to investigate the CEvNS process of antineutrinos off xenon atomic nuclei. In this work, the design of the experiment is studied and optimized based on Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. To achieve a sufficiently low energy threshold for CEvNS detection, an ionization-only analysis channel is adopted for RELICS. A high emission rate of delayed electrons after a big ionization signal is the major background, leading to an analysis threshold of 120 photo-electrons in the CEvNS search. The second largest background, nuclear recoils induced by cosmic-ray neutrons, is suppressed via a passive water shield. The physics potential of RELICS is explored with a 32 kg*yr exposure at a baseline of 25 m from a reactor core with a 3 GW thermal power. In an energy range of 120 to 300 PE, corresponding to an average nuclear recoil from 0.63 to 1.36 keV considering the liquid xenon response and detector-related effect, we expect 4639.7 CEvNS and 1687.8 background events. The sensitivity of RELICS to the weak mixing angle is investigated at a low momentum transfer. Our study shows that RELICS can further improve the constraints on the non-standard neutrino interaction (NSI) compared to the current best results.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2405.05554,
title = {Reactor neutrino liquid xenon coherent elastic scattering experiment},
author = {Chang Cai and Guocai Chen and Jiangyu Chen and Rundong Fang and Fei Gao and Xiaoran Guo and Jiheng Guo and Tingyi He and Chengjie Jia and Gaojun Jin and Yipin Jing and Gaojun Ju and Yang Lei and Jiayi Li and Kaihang Li and Meng Li and Minhua Li and Shengchao Li and Siyin Li and Tao Li and Qing Lin and Jiajun Liu and Minghao Liu and Sheng Lv and Guang Luo and Jian Ma and Chuanping Shen and Mingzhuo Song and Lijun Tong and Xiaoyu Wang and Wei Wang and Xiaoping Wang and Zihu Wang and Yuehuan Wei and Liming Weng and Xiang Xiao and Lingfeng Xie and Dacheng Xu and Jijun Yang and Litao Yang and Long Yang and Jingqiang Ye and Jiachen Yu and Qian Yue and Yuyong Yue and Bingwei Zhang and Shuhao Zhang and Yifei Zhao and Chenhui Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.05554},
year = {2024}
}