First Detection of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering on Argon

Journal Article (Academic article)

We report the first detection of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) on argon using the CENNS-10 liquid argon detector at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Spallation Neutron Source. Two independent analyses prefer CEvNS over the background-only null hypothesis with greater than $3\sigma$ significance. The measured cross section, averaged over the incident neutrino flux, is ($2.2 \pm 0.7) \times 10^{-39}$ cm$^2$ -- consistent with the standard model prediction. This is the lightest nucleus for which CEvNS has been observed, which allows us to verify the expected neutron-number dependence of the cross section and to better constrain non-standard neutrino interactions.

Full Text

Duke Authors

Cited Authors

  • Collaboration, COHERENT; Akimov, D; Albert, JB; An, P; Awe, C; Barbeau, PS; Becker, B; Belov, V; Blackston, MA; Blokland, L; Bolozdynya, A; Cabrera-Palmer, B; Chen, N; Chernyak, D; Conley, E; Cooper, RL; Daughhetee, J; Coello, MDV; Detwiler, JA; Durand, MR; Efremenko, Y; Elliott, SR; Fabris, L; Febbraro, M; Fox, W; Galindo-Uribarri, A; Green, MP; Hansen, KS; Heath, MR; Hedges, S; Hughes, M; Johnson, T; Kaemingk, M; Kaufman, LJ; Khromov, A; Konovalov, A; Kozlova, E; Kumpan, A; Li, L; Librande, JT; Link, JM; Liu, J; Mann, K; Markoff, DM; McGoldrick, O; Moreno, H; Mueller, PE; Newby, J; Parno, DS; Penttila, S; Pershey, D; Radford, D; Rapp, R; Ray, H; Raybern, J; Razuvaeva, O; Reyna, D; Rich, GC; Rudik, D; Runge, J; Salvat, DJ; Scholberg, K; Shakirov, A; Simakov, G; Sinev, G; Snow, WM; Sosnovtsev, V; Suh, B; Tayloe, R; Tellez-Giron-Flores, K; Thornton, RT; Tolstukhin, I; Vanderwerp, J; Varner, RL; Virtue, CJ; Visser, G; Wiseman, C; Wongjirad, T; Yang, J; Yen, Y-R; Yoo, J; Yu, C-H; Zettlemoyer, J

Published Date

  • March 25, 2020

PubMed ID

  • 33480779