Journal article
Background studies for the MINER Coherent Neutrino Scattering reactor experiment
G Agnolet, W Baker, D Barker, R Beck, TJ Carroll, J Cesar, P Cushman, JB Dent, S De Rijck, B Dutta, W Flanagan, M Fritts, Y Gao, HR Harris, CC Hays, V Iyer, A Jastram, F Kadribasic, A Kennedy, A Kubik Show all
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A Accelerators Spectrometers Detectors and Associated Equipment | ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV | Published : 2017
Abstract
The proposed Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor (MINER) experiment at the Nuclear Science Center at Texas A&M University will search for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering within close proximity (about 2 m) of a 1 MW TRIGA nuclear reactor core using low threshold, cryogenic germanium and silicon detectors. Given the Standard Model cross section of the scattering process and the proposed experimental proximity to the reactor, as many as 5–20 events/kg/day are expected. We discuss the status of preliminary measurements to characterize the main backgrounds for the proposed experiment. Both in situ measurements at the experimental site and simulations using the MCNP and ..
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Awarded by University of Texas at Austin
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy for seed funding, as well as the Brazos HPC cluster at Texas A& M University (brazos.tamu.edu) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin (www.tacc.utexas.edufor providing resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper. We also gratefully acknowledge the TAMU Nuclear Science Center for facilitating the MINER experiment and providing numerous resources and advice in the course of planning and developing this program. R.M, R.H. and N.M acknowledge the support of DOE grant DE-SC0014036 in development of synergistic activities with the SuperCDMS collaboration. G.V.R. acknowledges support by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Science, under Award No. DE-FG02-93ER40773 and also support by the Welch Foundation (Grant No. A-1853). J.W.W. acknowledges support from NSF grant PHY-1521105 and the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. L.S. acknowledges support from NSF grant PHY-1522717. B.D. acknowledges support from DOE grant DE-FG02-13ER42020.