Low Energy Neutrino Research Articles

The R&D progress of the Jinping neutrino experiment

China JinPing underground Laboratory (CJPL) is located about 2400 m below Jinping mountain, providing a unique feature for studies of low-energy neutrinos. A neutrino experiment has been proposed to perform an in-depth research on solar neutrinos, geo-neutrinos and supernova relic neutrinos at Jinping. The physics motivations, the R&D efforts and the present status are reported for a proposed kilo-ton neutrino detector at Jinping. The future prospects are also given.

Reduction of the uncertainty in the atmospheric neutrino flux prediction below 1 GeV using accurately measured atmospheric muon flux

We examine the uncertainty of the calculation of the atmospheric neutrino flux and present a way to reduce it using accurately measured atmospheric muon flux. Considering the difference of the hadronic interaction model and the real one as a variation of hadronic interaction, we find a quantitative estimation method for the error of the atmospheric neutrino flux calculation from the residual of the reconstruction of the atmospheric muon flux observed in a precision experiment, by the study of atmospheric neutrino and muon fluxes response to the variation of hadronic interaction. However, the efficiencty of this method is largely dependent on the observation site of the atmospheric muon flux, as the relation of the error of the atmospheric neutrino flux calculation and the residual of the reconstruction of the atmospheric muon flux is also largely dependent on the muon observation site, especially for the low energy neutrinos. We calculate several observation sites, near Kamioka at sea level, same but 2770m a.s.l.., Hanle India (4500m a.s.l.), and at Balloon altitude ($\sim$ 32km). Then we estimate how stringently can the atmospheric muon reduce the error in the calculation of the atmospheric neutrino flux. We also discuss on the source of error which is difficult to reduce by only the observation of atmospheric muon.

μ − τ reflection symmetry and its explicit breaking for leptogenesis in a minimal seesaw model

The minimal seesaw framework, embroiling the Dirac neutrino mass matrix [Formula: see text] and the Majorana neutrino mass matrix [Formula: see text], is quite successful to explain the current global-fit results of neutrino oscillation data. In this context, we consider the most predictive forms of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] with two simple parameters, respectively. Considering these matrices, we obtain the low-energy neutrino mass matrix under type-I seesaw formalism which obeys [Formula: see text] reflection symmetry and predicts [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. In the given set-up, we also evaluate the Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe (BAU) through successful leptogenesis and find that perturbation of [Formula: see text] leads to the observed BAU and breaks exactness of the symmetry. Moreover, we also perform various correlation studies among different parameters in the framework of broken symmetry.

Nuclear response to supernova neutrino spectra

In current probes searching for rare event processes, appropriate nuclear targets are employed (in the COBRA double-beta decay detector the CdZnTe semiconductor is used). In this work the response of such detectors to various low-energy neutrino spectra is explored starting from state-by-state calculations of the neutrino-nucleus reactions cross sections obtained by using the quasi particle random phase approximation (QRPA) based on realistic two-body residual interactions. As a concrete example, we examine the response of 64Zn isotope to low energy supernova neutrinos.

Forbidden transitions in neutral- and charged-current interactions between low-energy neutrinos and argon

Background: The study of low-energy neutrinos and their interactions with atomic nuclei is crucial to several open problems in physics, including the neutrino mass hierarchy, CP-violation, candidates of Beyond Standard Model physics and supernova dynamics. Examples of experiments include CAPTAIN at SNS as well as DUNE's planned detection program of supernova neutrinos. Purpose: We present cross section calculations for quasielastic charged current and neutral current neutrinos at low energies, with a focus on $^{40}$Ar. We also take a close look at pion decay-at-rest neutrino spectra, which are used in e.g. the SNS experiment at Oakridge. Method and results: We employ a Hartree Fock + Continuum Random Phase Approximations (HF+CRPA) framework, which allows us to model the responses and include the effects of long-range correlations. It is expected to provide a good framework to calculate forbidden transitions, whose contribution which we show to be non-negligible. Conclusions: Forbidden transitions can be expected to contribute sizeably to the reaction strength at typical low-energy kinematics, such as DAR neutrinos. Modeling and Monte Carlo simulations need to take all due care to account for the influence of their contributions.

Exploring low-energy neutrino physics with the Coherent Neutrino Nucleus Interaction Experiment

The Coherent Neutrino-Nucleus Interaction Experiment (CONNIE) uses low-noise fully depleted charge-coupled devices (CCDs) with the goal of measuring low-energy recoils from coherent elastic scattering (CE$\nu$NS) of reactor antineutrinos with silicon nuclei and testing nonstandard neutrino interactions (NSI). We report here the first results of the detector array deployed in 2016, considering an active mass 47.6 g (8 CCDs), which is operating at a distance of 30 m from the core of the Angra 2 nuclear reactor, with a thermal power of 3.8 GW. A search for neutrino events is performed by comparing data collected with reactor on (2.1 kg-day) and reactor off (1.6 kg-day). The results show no excess in the reactor-on data, reaching the world record sensitivity down to recoil energies of about 1 keV (0.1 keV electron-equivalent). A 95% confidence level limit for new physics is established at an event rate of 40 times the one expected from the standard model at this energy scale. The results presented here provide a new window to low-energy neutrino physics, allowing one to explore for the first time the energies accessible through the low threshold of CCDs. They will lead to new constrains on NSI from the CE$\nu$NS of antineutrinos from nuclear reactors.

Characterization of a 109Cd γ-Ray Source for the Two-Phase Argon Detector

A two-phase argon detector is being developed in our laboratory for dark matter search and low-energy neutrino experiments. A 109Cd γ-ray source was used to calibrate the energy scale of the detector. In this paper, a detailed emission spectrum of the 109Cd source was measured using a YAP:Ce based scintillation detector and high-purity germanium detector. It was shown that the 109Cd source equipped with a tungsten substrate and a copper filter can provide a complete set of γ-ray lines in the range from 8 to 90 keV for energy calibration of two-phase detectors. These measurements allowed us to successfully quantify the shape of the amplitude spectrum observed when the two-phase detector was irradiated by the 109Cd source.

Type I seesaw mechanism as the common origin of neutrino mass, baryon asymmetry, and the electroweak scale

The type-I seesaw represents one of the most popular extensions of the Standard Model. Previous studies of this model have mostly focused on its ability to explain neutrino oscillations as well as on the generation of the baryon asymmetry via leptogenesis. Recently, it has been pointed out that the type-I seesaw can also account for the origin of the electroweak scale due to heavy-neutrino threshold corrections to the Higgs potential. In this paper, we show for the first time that all of these features of the type-I seesaw are compatible with each other. Integrating out a set of heavy Majorana neutrinos results in small masses for the Standard Model neutrinos; baryogenesis is accomplished by resonant leptogenesis; and the Higgs mass is entirely induced by heavy-neutrino one-loop diagrams, provided that the tree-level Higgs potential satisfies scale-invariant boundary conditions in the ultraviolet. The viable parameter space is characterized by a heavy-neutrino mass scale roughly in the range $10^{6.5\cdots7.0}$ GeV and a mass splitting among the nearly degenerate heavy-neutrino states up to a few TeV. Our findings have interesting implications for high-energy flavor models and low-energy neutrino observables. We conclude that the type-I seesaw sector might be the root cause behind the masses and cosmological abundances of all known particles. This statement might even extend to dark matter in the presence of a keV-scale sterile neutrino.

Neutrino spin oscillations in polarized matter

We study the neutrino spin oscillations, i.e., neutrino spin precession caused by the neutrino interaction with matter polarized by external magnetic field (or, equivalently, by the interaction of the induced magnetic moment (IMM) of a neutrino with the magnetic field). In the analysis, we consider realistic conditions inside supernovae and discuss both the Dirac and Majorana cases. We show that due to the interaction with the polarized matter a neutrino flux from a supernova suffers additional attenuation at low neutrino energies. Another possible effect is that when taken together the effects of conventional magnetic moment and polarized matter can cancel each other so that under certain condition the oscillations disappear. We note that this can lead to the appearance of a characteristic maximum in the spectrum of electron neutrinos from supernovae. Accounting for neutrino mixing (in the two-flavor approximation) can significantly increase (almost twice) the effective value of the IMM of the electron neutrino. As a result, electron neutrinos with twice as high energy will be able to participate in the processes of spin conversion. Various feedback mechanisms accompanying the considered phenomena are also discussed.

ELECTROCHEMICAL ANALYSIS ON OUTPUT CURRENTS OF NEUTRINO ANTINEUTRINO-SENSITIVE APPARATUS

We analyze the interaction of antineutrinos with water particle in electrochemical detectors. We postulate that some biological products generate a scalar auxiliary field B0 which breaks low-energy antineutrinos into boson vb and fermion v f particles. Low-energy anti neutrinos are suggested to interact with water molecules and produce output currents. We examine the output current of neutrino interactions in the electrochemical apparatus with chemical-reaction equations and half-cell model under postulated influence of weak interaction. The environmental neutrino is analysed. The output currents are treated to be generated by hydrogen ion and oxygen with the half-cell model with inclusion of weak interaction effect on hydrooxide ion recombination.

Low-energy neutrino scattering in experiment and astrophysics

We review the relevance of neutrino-nucleus interactions at energy transfers below 100 MeV for accelerator-based experiments, experiments at lower energies and for astrophysical neutrinos. The impact of low-energy scattering processes in the energy reconstruction analysis of oscillation experiments is investigated. We discuss the modeling of coherent scattering processes and compare its strength to that of inelastic interactions. The presented results are obtained within a continuum random phase approximation approach.

A Froggatt–Nielsen flavor model for neutrino physics

Superheavy neutrinos can, via the seesaw model, provide a mechanism for lepton number violation. If they are combined with flavor violation as characterized by the Froggatt–Nielsen mechanism, then the phenomenology for the neutrinos in oscillation experiments, neutrinoless double beta decay, and other experiments can be described by a relatively few number of parameters. We describe the low-energy neutrino mass matrix and show that the results are consistent with currently available data.

Neutrino spin oscillations in external fields in curved spacetime

We study spin oscillations of massive Dirac neutrinos in background matter, electromagnetic and gravitational fields. First, using the Dirac equation for a neutrino interacting with the external fields in curved spacetime, we rederive the quasiclassical equation for the neutrino spin evolution, which was proposed previously basing on principles of the general covariance. Then, we apply this result for the description of neutrino spin oscillations in nonmoving and unpolarized matter under the influence of a constant transverse magnetic field and a gravitational wave. We derive the effective Schr\"odinger equation for neutrino oscillations in these external fields and solve it numerically. Choosing realistic parameters of external fields, we show that the parametric resonance can take place in spin oscillations of low energy neutrinos. Some astrophysical applications are briefly discussed.

Black Hole Hyperaccretion in Collapsars. I. MeV Neutrinos

Abstract As the plausible central engine of gamma-ray bursts, a black hole (BH) hyperaccretion disk should be in a state of neutrino-dominated accretion flow (NDAF) if the accretion rate is larger than the ignition rate of an NDAF. A rotating stellar-mass BH surrounded by a hyperaccretion disk might be born in the center of a massive core collapsar. In the initial hundreds of seconds of the accretion process, the mass supply rate of the massive progenitor is generally higher than the ignition accretion rate, but the jets are generally choked in the envelope. Thus, neutrinos can be emitted from the center of a core collapsar. In this paper, we study the effects of the masses and metallicities of progenitor stars on the time-integrated spectra of electron neutrinos from NDAFs. The peak energies of the calculated spectra are approximately 10–20 MeV. The mass of a collapsar has little influence on the neutrino spectrum, and a low metallicity is beneficial to the production of low-energy (≲1 MeV) neutrinos. We also investigate the differences in the electron neutrino spectra between NDAFs and proto-neutron stars. Combining with the electromagnetic counterparts and multimessenger astronomy, one may verify the possible remnants of the core collapse of massive stars with future neutrino detectors.

Investigating Sterile Neutrino Flux in the Solar Neutrino Data

There are compelling evidences for the existence of a fourth degree of freedom of neutrinos, i.e., sterile neutrino. In the recent studies the role of sterile component of neutrinos has been found to be crucial, not only in particle physics, but also in astrophysics and cosmology. This has been proposed to be one of the potential candidates of dark matter. In this work we investigate the updated solar neutrino data available from all the relevant experiments including Borexino and KamLAND solar phase in a model independent way and obtain bounds on the sterile neutrino component present in the solar neutrino flux. The mystery of the missing neutrinos is further deepening as subsequent experiments are coming up with their results. The energy spectrum of solar neutrinos, as predicted by Standard Solar Models (SSM), is seen by neutrino experiments at different parts as they are sensitive to various neutrino energy ranges. It is interesting to note that more than 98% of the calculated standard model solar neutrino flux lies below 1 MeV. Therefore, the study of low energy neutrinos can give us better understanding and the possibility of knowing about the presence of antineutrino and sterile neutrino components in solar neutrino flux. As such, this work becomes interesting as we include the data from medium energy (~1 MeV) experiments, i.e., Borexino and KamLAND solar phase. In our study we retrieve the bounds existing in literature and rather provide more stringent limits on sterile neutrino (νs) flux available in solar neutrino data.

Representing seesaw neutrino models and their motion in lepton flavour space

We discuss how seesaw neutrino models can be graphically represented in lepton flavour space. We examine various popular models and show how this representation helps understanding their properties and connection with experimental data showing in particular how certain texture zero models are ruled out. We also introduce a new matrix, the bridging matrix, that brings from the light to the heavy neutrino mass flavour basis, showing how this is related to the orthogonal matrix and how different quantities are easily expressed through it. We then show how one can randomly generate orthogonal and leptonic mixing matrices uniformly covering all flavour space in an unbiased way (Haar-distributed matrices). Using the isomorphism between the group of complex rotations and the Lorentz group, we also introduce the concept of Lorentz boost in flavour space for a seesaw model and how this has an insightful physical interpretation. Finally, as a significant application, we consider N2-leptogenesis. Using current experimental values of low energy neutrino parameters, we show that the probability that at least one flavoured decay parameter of the lightest right-handed neutrino is smaller than unity is about 49% (to be compared with the tiny probability that the total decay parameter is smaller than unity, P (KI< 1) ∼ 0.1%, confirming the crucial role played by flavour effects). On the other hand when m1 ≳ 0.1 eV this probability reduces to less than 5%, showing how also N2-leptogenesis disfavours degenerate light neutrinos.

Littlest mu-tau seesaw

We propose a μ − τ reflection symmetric Littlest Seesaw (μτ -LSS) model. In this model the two mass parameters of the LSS model are fixed to be in a special ratio by symmetry, so that the resulting neutrino mass matrix in the flavour basis (after the seesaw mechanism has been applied) satisfies μ − τ reflection symmetry and has only one free adjustable parameter, namely an overall free mass scale. However the physical low energy predictions of the neutrino masses and lepton mixing angles and CP phases are subject to renormalisation group (RG) corrections, which introduces further parameters. Although the high energy model is rather complicated, involving (S4 × U(1))2 and supersymmetry, with many flavons and driving fields, the low energy neutrino mass matrix has ultimate simplicity.

Low energy neutrinos from stopped muons in the Earth

We explore the low energy neutrinos from stopped cosmic ray muons in the Earth. Based on the muon intensity at the sea level and the muon energy loss rate, the depth distributions of stopped muons in the rock and sea water can be derived. Then we estimate the $\mu^-$ decay and nuclear capture probabilities in the rock. Finally, we calculate the low energy neutrino fluxes and find that they depend heavily on the detector depth $d$. For $d = 1000$ m, the $\nu_e$, $\bar{\nu}_e$, $\nu_\mu$ and $\bar{\nu}_\mu$ fluxes in the range of 13 MeV $ \leq E_\nu \leq$ 53 MeV are averagely $10.8 \%$, $6.3\%$, $3.7 \%$ and $6.2 \%$ of the corresponding atmospheric neutrino fluxes, respectively. The above results will be increased by a factor of 1.4 if the detector depth $d < 30$ m. In addition, we find that most neutrinos come from the region within 200 km and the near horizontal direction, and the $\bar{\nu}_e$ flux depends on the local rock and water distributions.

Simulated Neutrino Signals of Low and Intermediate Energy Neutrinos on Cd Detectors

Neutrino-nucleus reactions cross sections, obtained for neutrino energies in the range $\varepsilon_{\nu}\leq 100-120$ MeV (low- and intermediate-energy range), which refer to promising neutrino detection targets of current terrestrial neutrino experiments, are presented and discussed. At first, we evaluated original cross sections for elastic scattering of neutrinos produced from various astrophysical and laboratory neutrino sources with the most abundant Cd isotopes $^{112}$Cd, $^{114}$Cd and $^{116}$Cd. These isotopes constitute the main material of the COBRA detector aiming to search for neutrinoless double beta decay events and neutrino-nucleus scattering events at the Gran Sasso laboratory (LNGS). The coherent $\nu$-nucleus reaction channel addressed with emphasis here, dominates the neutral current $\nu$-nucleus scattering, events of which have only recently been observed for a first time in the COHERENT experiment at Oak Ridge. Subsequently, simulated $\nu$-signals expected to be recorded at Cd detectors are derived through the application of modern simulation techniques and employment of reliable neutrino distributions of astrophysical $\nu$-sources (as the solar, supernova and Earth neutrinos), as well as laboratory neutrinos (like the reactor neutrinos, the neutrinos produced from pion-muon decay at rest and the $\beta$-beam neutrinos produced from the acceleration of radioactive isotopes at storage rings as e.g. at CERN).

A new method of energy reconstruction for large spherical liquid scintillator detectors

Liquid scintillators are commonly used to detect low energy neutrinos from the reactors, sun, and earth. It is a challenge to reconstruct deposited energies for a large liquid scintillator detector. For detectors with multiple optical mediums such as JUNO and SNO+, the prediction of the propagation of detected photons is extremely difficult due to mixed optical processes such as Rayleigh scattering, refraction and total reflection at their boundaries. Calibration based reconstruction methods consume impractical time since a large number of calibration points are required in a giant detector. In this paper, we propose a new model-independent method to reconstruct deposited energies with minimum requirements on the calibration system. This method is validated with JUNO's offline software. Monte Carlo studies show that the energy non-uniformity can be controlled below 1%, which is crucial for JUNO to achieve 3% energy resolution.