Solar neutrino detection in liquid xenon detectors via charged-current scattering to excited states

Abstract

We investigate the prospects for real-time detection of solar neutrinos via the charged-current neutrino-nucleus scattering process in liquid xenon time projection chambers. We use a nuclear shell model, benchmarked with experimental data, to calculate the cross sections for populating specific excited states of the caesium nuclei produced by neutrino capture on ${}^{131}$Xe and ${}^{136}$Xe. The shell model is further used to compute the decay schemes of the low-lying $1^{+}$ excited states of ${}^{136}$Cs, for which there is sparse experimental data. We explore the possibility of tagging the characteristic de-excitation $\gamma$-rays/conversion electrons using two techniques: spatial separation of their energy deposits using event topology and their time separation using delayed coincidence. The efficiencies in each case are evaluated within a range of realistic detector parameters. We find that the topological signatures are likely to be dominated by radon backgrounds, but that a delayed coincidence signature from long-lived states predicted in ${}^{136}$Cs may enable background-free detection of CNO neutrino interactions in next-generation experiments with smaller uncertainty than current measurements. We also estimate the sensitivity as a function of exposure for detecting the solar-temperature-induced line shift in ${}^7$Be neutrino emission, which may provide a new test of solar models.

arXiv comment12 pages, 7 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics
• The Future of Solar Neutrinos
• Solar neutrino physics
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