Session K10: Neutrino Instrumentation I

Cosmogenic background suppression at the Short Baseline Far Detector (ICARUS)

The Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program is a program composed of three Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) based at Fermilab that is geared to help us understand the elusive neutrino. Together with a Cosmic Ray Tagger (CRT) system, the ICARUS detector serves as the Far Detector in the SBN Program. As this detector will be operating at shallow depth, it will be exposed to a high flux of cosmic rays that could fake a neutrino interaction. In this talk, I will discuss some of the first data analyses done with the fully commissioned CRT system, including CRT Hit timing measurements.    

Neutrino Cross Section Prospects Using the NuMI off axis at ICARUS

ICARUS is a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber that will serve as the Far Detector of theshort-baseline neutrino program using the Booster beamline at Fermilab, and it is located 103mrad off-axis from the NuMI beamline. The status of the PMT based trigger system on electronand muon neutrinos from NuMI will be shown, as well as prospects for cross-sectionmeasurements including electron neutrino selection and event reconstruction. Accurate neutrinocross-section measurements on argon are required for precise measurements of neutrinooscillation parameters such as CP-violation and the neutrino mass hierarchy.   

Neutron Generator Calibration System for the DUNE Far Detector

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international experiment dedicated to addressing some of the unanswered questions at the forefront of particle physics. DUNE will measure the oscillation probabilities of neutrinos and antineutrinos which could help us to understand the preponderance of matter over antimatter in the universe, search for the Charge-Parity (CP) symmetry violation in neutrinos, study the dynamics of the supernovae and deliver world-leading results in solar neutrinos. One of the calibration systems proposed for DUNE is the neutron generator based Pulsed Neutron Source (PNS) system. Neutron captures provide a fixed energy deposition for calibrating the energy scale and energy resolution spatially and temporally across the DUNE volume. The first test for the PNS system was performed using a deuterium-deuterium neutron generator (DDG) at the ProtoDUNE Single Phase detector in summer 2020, to test our neutron transport model and help develop neutron capture reconstruction algorithms. In this talk I will discuss the motivation for such a calibration system for DUNE, present the results from the test and talk about our preparation for a second test.   

Neutral Current Pion Production Measurement in MicroBooNE

Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) are the current and future detectors employed in studying neutrinos from a beam. Their importance is based on their exceptional calorimetric and position resolution capabilities. In particular, their ability to distinguish between electrons and photons is an advantageous aspect compared to other technologies and a crucial one for neutrino oscillation experiments. The MicroBooNE experiment uses the LArTPC technology to investigate the MiniBooNE low-energy excess, which could also be photon-like in nature. To test this hypothesis, MicroBooNE is searching for single-photon events. However, the NC π⁰ production process presents a real challenge in this task, being more common and having a similar topology. This talk presents a method to improve the current NC π⁰ event selection in MicroBooNE using the Wire-Cell paradigm, as a way to constrain the systematic uncertainty in the single-photon search.   

Purity monitoring for ProtoDUNE-SP

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment based on liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) technology. DUNE's single-phase (SP) prototype ProtoDUNE-SP (PD-SP) at CERN finished its two-year Phase-1 running in July 2021, successfully collected test-beam and cosmic ray data. A key aspect of LArTPC calibration is the lifetime of drift electrons, which corrects the charge attenuation caused by drift electrons captured by impurities. A purity monitor is a miniature TPC measuring the lifetime of electrons generated from the photocathode via the photoelectric effect. It enables continuous monitoring of the detector status, especially when filling the cryostat and when liquid argon recirculation systems operate. The purity monitoring system in ProtoDUNE-SP Phase-1 (PD-SP-I) monitored liquid argon purity throughout its entire lifetime. It is essential to the experiment's successful commissioning, operation, and data taking. I will discuss the design, implementation, and results of purity monitors in PD-SP-I and future plans.   

Neutrino Interactions in XENONnT

The XENONnT experiment is a dual-phase xenon Time Projection Chamber.  Beyond its primary science goal to detect WIMP dark matter, XENONnT will be highly sensitive to a variety of rare neutrino processes. With a few hundred kilograms of Xenon-136 in the fiducial volume, we will search for hints of neutrinoless double beta decay. Through coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, XENONnT will measure solar Boron-8 neutrinos and potentially neutrinos from the next galactic supernova. A significant number of solar pp neutrino interactions are expected to give electronic recoil signatures near the energy range where XENON1T observed an excess of events. In this talk, I will give an overview of the impressive capability of the XENONnT detector to observe rare neutrino phenomena.   

The COHERENT neutrino scattering program at the ORNL Spallation Neutron Source

The COHERENT collaboration program for studying neutrino scattering involves multiple detector targets located in Neutrino Alley in the basement of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Spallation Neutron Source. Two measurements of the coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) cross section on a CsI detector and in a liquid argon (LAr) detector have been published. To continue studying the neutron number squared dependence of the cross section, an 18 kg germanium detector array and a 2.4 tonne NaI detector array will be deployed. For neutrino flux studies, a D2O detector will be deployed. In addition, a study of the charged-current electron-neutrino scattering on 127I and neutrino-induced neutron (NIN) production are underway along with extensive neutron background studies. A study of neutrino induced fission on thorium is planned and a CryoCsI experiment is under development. An update on the status of detector systems and planned experiments in Neutrino Alley will be presented.   

Deployment of COHERENT multi-tonne NaI[Tl] detector (NaIvETE)

The COHERENT collaboration operates a multi-target suite of low-threshold neutrino detectors at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. These detectors are uniquely equipped to observe the dominant low-energy (E_ν ~ tens of MeV) interaction of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS). CEvNS is a neutral-current process whose only experimental signal is scintillation from nuclear recoils of mere tens of keV. One characteristic of the Standard Model cross section for CEvNS is its dependence on the number of neutrons squared. In order to probe this N² scaling with the relatively light ²³Na nucleus, COHERENT will deploy a tonne-scale detector with scintillating NaI[Tl] crystals, a successor to the NaIvE detector. We will present the progress on construction and 2022 deployment for the NaI Neutrino Experiment TonnE-scale (NaIvETE).   

Physics Reach of a Reactor CEvNS Liquid Argon SBC

A successful CEvNS measurement requires a large neutrino flux, low backgrounds, and a detector sensitive to low energy nuclear recoils. Nuclear reactors offer a free flux of ~MeV neutrinos and an off-reactor data set allows for subtraction of non-reactor backgrounds. The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is currently constructing a 10-kg liquid argon scintillating bubble chamber at Fermilab. The detector has the potential to be sensitive to 100-eV nuclear recoils while remaining highly insensitive to electron recoil backgrounds. In addition, silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) can measure scintillation light to maximize background rejection for nuclear recoils. Nearly mono-energetic photoneutron sources can calibrate the detector for nuclear recoils below 8 keV and gamma sources can use Thomson scattering to probe the nucleation efficiency function near the targeted 100-eV threshold. This talk presents a physics reach analysis of such a detector for reactor CEvNS experiments, including sensitivities to: the weak mixing angle, neutrino magnetic moment, and a light Z gauge boson mediator. World leading sensitivities could be achieved with a 1 year exposure of a 100-eV detector 3 m from a 1 MW_th research reactor.