Towards Observation of Neutrino Nucleus Coherent Scattering at Power Reactor
Nuclear reactors provide an intense source of low energy neutrinos, allowing the studies of neutrino elastic scattering with the atomic nucleus at full quantum-mechanical coherency. The TEXONO experiment has been pursuing this research at the Kuo-Sheng Reactor Neutrino Laboratory in Taiwan since 2005, pioneering advances in several generations of novel germanium ionization detectors with reducing threshold. No excesses of neutrino events were observed from data taken prior to the Reactor decommissioning in 2023. New upper limit of 4.7 times the Standard Model predicted cross-sections was placed. This work, published in Physical Review Letters on 27 March, 2025, sets the stage of imminent positive observation with the next-generation detectors (*), and opens the windows of sensitive searches of new physics. The TEXONO team will continue the studies at the Sanmen Reactor Laboratory in Zhejiang.
(*) Preliminary first observation was reported by the European CONUS+ experiment in January 2025, with data taken in 2024.
【Article link】https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.121802
【Physical Review Letters Impact Factor (2023)】8.1 (https://journals.aps.org/metrics)
Figure: Schematic illustration of neutrino emission and detector at power reactor.
Journal Links: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.121802