Direct observation of coherent elastic antineutrino–nucleus scattering

Abstract Neutrinos are elementary particles that interact only very weakly with matter. Neutrino experiments are, therefore, usually big, with masses in the multi-tonne range. The thresholdless interaction of coherent elastic scattering of neutrinos on atomic nuclei leads to greatly enhanced interaction rates, which allows for much smaller detectors. The study of this process gives insights into physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. The CONUS+ experiment 1 was designed to first detect elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering in the fully coherent regime with low-energy neutrinos produced in nuclear reactors. For this purpose, semiconductor detectors based on high-purity germanium crystals with…

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  Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
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  Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics