On the impact of the Migdal effect in reactor CE$\nu$NS experiments

Abstract

The search for coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) using reactor antineutrinos represents a formidable experimental challenge, recently boosted by the observation of such a process at the Dresden-II reactor site using a germanium detector. This observation relies on an unexpected enhancement at low energies of the measured quenching factor with respect to the theoretical Lindhard model prediction, which implies an extra observable ionization signal produced after the nuclear recoil. A possible explanation for this additional contribution could be provided by the so-called Migdal effect, which however has never been observed. Here, we study in detail the impact of the Migdal contribution to the standard CE$\nu$NS signal calculated with the Lindhard quenching factor, finding that the former is completely negligible for observed energies below $\sim 0.3\mathrm{keV}$ where the signal is detectable, and thus unable to provide any contribution to CE$\nu$NS searches in this energy regime. To this purpose, we compare different formalisms used to describe the Migdal effect that intriguingly show a perfect agreement, making our findings robust.

7 pages, 4 figures. Matches the published version

References in corpus (30)

• Observation of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering
• Updated Summation Model: An Improved Agreement with the Daya Bay Antineutrino Fluxes
• Measurement of the Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering Cross Section on CsI by COHERENT
• Constraints on elastic neutrino nucleus scattering in the fully coherent regime from the CONUS experiment
• Measurement of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering from reactor antineutrinos
• DarkELF: A python package for dark matter scattering in dielectric targets
• Physics results from the first COHERENT observation of CE$\nu$NS in argon and their combination with cesium-iodide data
• Germanium response to sub-keV nuclear recoils: a multipronged experimental characterization
• Impact of the Dresden-II and COHERENT neutrino scattering data on neutrino electromagnetic properties and electroweak physics
• Direct measurement of the ionization quenching factor of nuclear recoils in germanium in the keV energy range
• Low-mass inelastic dark matter direct detection via the Migdal effect
• New constraint on neutrino magnetic moment and neutrino millicharge from LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter search results
• First results from a search for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) at a reactor site
• Search for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering at a nuclear reactor with CONNIE 2019 data
• First results of the nuGeN experiment on coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering
• Atomic limits in the search for galactic dark matter
• New insights into nuclear physics and weak mixing angle using electroweak probes
• Precise predictions and new insights for atomic ionisation from the Migdal effect
• A Search for Low-mass Dark Matter via Bremsstrahlung Radiation and the Migdal Effect in SuperCDMS
• New reactor data improves robustness of neutrino mass ordering determination
• Nuclear neutron radius and weak mixing angle measurements from latest COHERENT CsI and atomic parity violation Cs data
• The RED-100 experiment
• Physics implications of recent Dresden-II reactor data
• Fast neutron background characterization of the future Ricochet experiment at the ILL research nuclear reactor
• Coherent neutrino scattering and the Migdal effect on the quenching factor
• Measuring the Migdal effect in semiconductors for dark matter detection
• Phonon-mediated Migdal effect in semiconductor detectors
• Implications of the first evidence for coherent elastic scattering of reactor neutrinos
• Ionization yield measurement in a germanium CDMSlite detector using photo-neutron sources
• Development of data processing and analysis pipeline for the RICOCHET experiment

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Direct observation of coherent elastic antineutrino-nucleus scattering
• Final CONUS results on coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering at the Brokdorf reactor
• A neutrino floor for the Migdal effect
• Reactor antineutrinos CE$\nu$NS on germanium: CONUS+ and TEXONO as a new gateway to SM and BSM physics
• Refined determination of the weak mixing angle at low energy
• Light vector bosons and the weak mixing angle in the light of future germanium-based reactor CE$\nu$NS experiments
• Joint analysis of reactor and accelerator CE$\nu$NS data on germanium: implications for the Standard Model and nuclear physics
• Comparison of the Migdal transition probabilities in electron-atom inelastic cross sections
• Phenomenological implications of the high-precision COHERENT germanium CE$\nu$NS data