Inelastic nuclear scattering from neutrinos and dark matter

Abstract

Neutrinos with energy of order 10 MeV, such as from pion decay-at-rest sources, are an invaluable tool for studying low-energy neutrino interactions with nuclei - previously enabling the first measurement of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. Beyond elastic scattering, neutrinos and dark matter in this energy range also excite nuclei to its low-lying nuclear states, providing an additional physics channel. Here, we consider neutral-current inelastic neutrino-nucleus and dark matter (DM)-nucleus scattering off Ar40, Cs133, and I127 nuclei that are relevant to a number of low-threshold neutrino experiments at pion decay-at-rest facilities. We carry out large scale nuclear shell mode..