Solar neutrino background in high-pressure gaseous 82SeF6 TPC neutrinoless double beta decay experiments* *Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12105110) and National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFA1604703)

Abstract

In this study, the possibility of observing a solar neutrino background in a future neutrinoless double beta decay experiment using a high-pressure gaseous 82SeF6 TPC is investigated. Various contributions are simulated, and possible features that could be used for event classification are discussed; two types of backgrounds are identified. The rate of multi-site background events is approximately 0.63 events/(ton·yr) in a 30 keV ROI window. This background could be effectively reduced to less than 0.0001 events/(ton·yr) (95% C.L.) while maintaining a high signal efficiency of 93% by applying a selection based on the number of clusters and energy of the leading cluster. The rate of the single-electron background events is approximately 0.01 events/(ton·yr) in the ROI. Assuming a reduction factor of 10 for the single-electron background events obtained via the algorithms developed for radioactive background rejection, the total background induced by the solar neutrino would be 0.001 events/(ton·yr), which is sufficiently small for conducting ton-level experiments.