Studies of Neutrino Nucleus Elastic Scattering at Reactors

Vivek Sharma^1*, H. T. Wong¹

¹Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

* Presenter:Vivek Sharma, email:vsharma@gate.sinica.edu.tw

Neutrino-Nucleus Elastic Scattering (νAel) is a well defined process in Standard Model of particle physics. It provides the probe to explore the unanswered questions regarding fundamental properties of neutrinos. Detection of small nuclear recoil in keV scale requires the development of ultra-low-energy threshold detectors. Point-contact germanium detectors with high energy resolution and low energy threshold are ideal to probe such interactions. The maximum nuclear recoil in νAel interaction from reactor neutrinos is <2 keV. This low energy region also comprises the high degree of coherency (>96%) in νAel with respect to other neutrino sources[1]. The νAel interaction for solar neutrinos possess degree of coherency higher than 83%, while for the stopped pion neutrinos, degree of coherency is less than 70%. We will highlight our studies on quantum mechanical coherency of this interaction with different neutrino sources,
as well as detector R&D programs with goals of experimentally probing this process.


[1] S. Kerman et al., Phys. Rev. D93, 113006 (2016).

Keywords: Neutrino Nucleus Elastic Scattering, Reactor Neutrino, Point Contact Germanium Detectors, Weak Interaction, Kuo-Sheng Reactor Neutrino Laboratory