How to measure the reactor neutrino flux below the inverse beta decay threshold with CE$\nu$NS

Abstract

Most antineutrinos produced in a nuclear reactor have energies below the inverse beta decay threshold, and have not yet been detected. We show that a coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering experiment with an ultra-low energy threshold like NUCLEUS can measure the flux of reactor neutrinos below 1.8 MeV. Using a regularized unfolding procedure, we find that a meaningful upper bound can be placed on the low energy flux, but the existence of the neutron capture component cannot be established.

6 pages, 7 figures. Version to appear in PRD

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Sterile neutrino searches with reactor antineutrinos using coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering experiments