JUNO sensitivity to low energy atmospheric neutrino spectra

Abstract

Atmospheric neutrinos are one of the most relevant natural neutrino sources that can be exploited to infer properties about cosmic rays and neutrino oscillations. The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) experiment, a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector with excellent energy resolution is currently under construction in China. JUNO will be able to detect several atmospheric neutrinos per day given the large volume. A study on the JUNO detection and reconstruction capabilities of atmospheric ${\nu }_e$ and ${\nu }_{\mu }$ fluxes is presented in this paper. In this study, a sample of atmospheric neutrino Monte Carlo events has been generated, starting from theoretical models, and then processed by the detector simulation. The excellent timing resolution of the 3'' PMT light detection system of JUNO detector and the much higher light yield for scintillation over Cherenkov allow to measure the time structure of the scintillation light with very high precision. Since ${\nu }_e$ and ${\nu }_{\mu }$ interactions produce a slightly different light pattern, the different time evolution of light allows to discriminate the flavor of primary neutrinos. A probabilistic unfolding method has been used, in order to infer the primary neutrino energy spectrum from the detector experimental observables. The simulated spectrum has been reconstructed between 100 MeV and 10 GeV, showing a great potential of the detector in the atmospheric low energy region.

25 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data
• Prompt neutrino fluxes from atmospheric charm
• Measurement of the atmospheric neutrino energy spectrum from 100 GeV to 400 TeV with IceCube
• Muon simulation codes MUSIC and MUSUN for underground physics
• The OPERA experiment Target Tracker
• Measurement of the Atmospheric ${\nu }_e$ flux in IceCube
• Measurement of the Inclusive Electron Neutrino Charged Current Cross Section on Carbon with the T2K Near Detector
• Distillation and stripping pilot plants for the JUNO neutrino detector: design, operations and reliability

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Prospects for Detecting the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO
• Neutrino Oscillations through the Earth's Core
• Time variation of the atmospheric neutrino flux at dark matter detectors
• JUNO sensitivity to the annihilation of MeV dark matter in the galactic halo
• CP-Violation with Neutrino Disappearance Alone
• Atmospheric Lepton Fluxes via Two-Dimensional Matrix Cascade Equations
• Status and Prospects of the JUNO Experiment
• The sensitivity of liquid scintillator detectors to CP-violation with atmospheric neutrinos
• JUNO Non-oscillation Physics