Background studies for the COHERENT experiment at the Spallation Neutron Source

Abstract

The COHERENT experiment is designed for a first measurement and N2 dependence study of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) at the Oak Ridge Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). CEvNS is a standard model process that is important in understanding supernova neutrinos, the structure of the weak interaction and backgrounds for dark matter searches. The COHERENT collaboration is placing a suite of detector technologies in a basement location at the SNS: 14 kg CsI[Na] crystals; 185 kg NaI crystals; 35 kg single-phase LAr; 10kg high-purity, point contact Ge. Previous attempts to measure the CEvNS process have grappled with very high background rates. One class of troublesome backgrounds is accelerator-correlated neutrons because a simple accelerator on/off background subtraction procedure fails to remove these events. The collaboration has completed a comprehensive background study in the basement region where the experiments are located. We conclude from these studies that the neutron background is sufficiently low for successful CEvNS measurement in the SNS basement region. Neutron measurements from the Indiana University SciBath detector and the Sandia Neutron Scatter Camera are presented here.