Towards First Detection of the Solar MSW Transition With JUNO

Abstract

Matter-induced neutrino flavor mixing (the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein, or MSW, effect) is a central prediction of the neutrino mixing framework, but it has not been conclusively observed. Direct observation of the energy-dependent MSW transition in the solar electron-neutrino survival probability would solve this, but backgrounds have been prohibitive. We show that our new technique for suppressing muon-induced spallation backgrounds will allow JUNO to measure the MSW transition at $>$4$\sigma$ significance in 10 years. This would strongly support upcoming multi-$1B next-generation experiments and their goals in cementing the neutrino mixing framework.

Main text is 4 pages. Minor changes to match the published version

References in corpus (3)

• Solar neutrino physics
• Testing the dark side of neutrino oscillations with the solar neutrino fog at Dark Matter experiments
• Searching for beyond-Standard-Model solar neutrino interactions using directional detectors