Journal article
New signal of atmospheric tau neutrino appearance: Sub-GeV neutral-current interactions in JUNO
SA Meighen-Berger, JF Beacom, NF Bell, MJ Dolan
Physical Review D | AMER PHYSICAL SOC | Published : 2024
Abstract
We propose the first practical method to detect atmospheric tau neutrino appearance at sub-GeV energies, which would be an important test of νμ→ντ oscillations and of new-physics scenarios. In the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO; starts in 2024), active-flavor neutrinos eject neutrons from carbon via neutral-current quasielastic scattering. This produces a two-part signal: the prompt part is caused by the scattering of the neutron in the scintillator, and the delayed part by its radiative capture. Such events have been observed in KamLAND, but only in small numbers and were treated as a background. With νμ→ντ oscillations, JUNO should measure a clean sample of 55 events/yr; w..
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Awarded by University of Melbourne
Funding Acknowledgements
We are grateful for helpful discussions with Bhavesh Chauhan, Peter Denton, Ivan Esteban, Yufeng Li, Eligio Lisi, Kenny Ng, Sergio Palomares-Ruiz, Louis Strigari, and Bei Zhou. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council through Discovery Project No. DP220101727. It was also supported by the Research Computing Services and the Petascale Campus Initiative at The University of Melbourne. J. F. B. was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. PHY-2310018.