The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), the first multi-kton liquid scintillator de... more The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), the first multi-kton liquid scintillator detector, which is under construction in China, will have a unique potential to perform a real-time measurement of solar neutrinos well below the few MeV threshold typical of Water Cherenkov detectors. JUNO's large target mass and excellent energy resolution are prerequisites for reaching unprecedented levels of precision. In this paper, we provide estimation of the JUNO sensitivity to 7Be, pep, and CNO solar neutrinos that can be obtained via a spectral analysis above the 0.45 MeV threshold. This study is performed assuming different scenarios of the liquid scintillator radiopurity, ranging from the most optimistic one corresponding to the radiopurity levels obtained by the Borexino experiment, up to the minimum requirements needed to perform the neutrino mass ordering determination with reactor antineutrinos — the main goal of JUNO. Our study shows that in most scenarios, JUNO will b...
Neutrinos coming from the Sun have played a crucial role in the discovery of neutrino oscillation... more Neutrinos coming from the Sun have played a crucial role in the discovery of neutrino oscillations and they still are proving to be a unique and powerful tool in the investigation of the fusion reactions that power the stars, as well as representing a probe to study the basic neutrino properties. The Borexino detector has started its data acquisition in 2007 in the underground Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS) in Italy. The main goal of Borexino is the real-time study of low energy neutrinos with an energy threshold as low as about 50 keV. A first phase named Borexino Phase-I started in 2007 and ended in 2010, then after a purification campaign, data-taking resumed in 2011 with the so-called Borexino Phase-II. I will present the recent results of Borexino for the measurement of the four main solar neutrino components of the pp fusion chain (pp, pep, 7Be, 8B), and the upper limits on the remaining two solar neutrino fluxes (CNO and hep).
The Juno observatory, currently under construction in Jiangmen (China), is a 20 kt liquid scintil... more The Juno observatory, currently under construction in Jiangmen (China), is a 20 kt liquid scintillator detector. Thanks to the large fiducial volume, and thus the high statistics collectable, and excellent energy resolution, it represents a compelling opportunity for the detection of solar neutrinos. In order to be able to extract solar neutrino fluxes once data taking has started, a multivariate fitting strategy will be adopted to disentangle neutrino signals from backgrounds present in the detector. The key steps of the analysis is the estimation of signal and background rates and Monte Carlo PDF production including detector response function. The main aspects used to produce such distributions and their exploitation within the fitting procedure are explained in the following presentation. Depending on the level of contaminants within the detector, it will be possible to extract neutrino fluxes more accurately. For this reason, sensitivity studies conducted under varying backgrou...
Geoneutrinos are electron antineutrinos and neutrinos emitted in the radioactive decays from the ... more Geoneutrinos are electron antineutrinos and neutrinos emitted in the radioactive decays from the Earth's interior. Due to the intrinsic dependence of the geoneutrino flux and the heat produced in the radioactive decays, geoneutrinos contribute uniquely to our knowledge about the Earth. The main goal of neutrino geophysics is to use the measured geoneutrino signals in estimating the abundance and distribution of the heat producing elements such as 238U, 235U, 232Th and 40K. The radiogenic heat contribution, especially the mantle contribution to the total surface heat flux and the structure and homogeneity of the mantle still remain as open questions. The combination of the total geoneutrino flux (≈106 cm-2s-1) and the weak interaction cross section (≈10-42 cm-2s-1) lead to large statistical uncertainties in the current measurements. This has made the study of geoneutrinos quite challenging and so far, only two detectors, namely KamLAND and Borexino, have measured geoneutrinos.The...
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kt liquid scintillator reactor neutr... more The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kt liquid scintillator reactor neutrino experiment being built in the Guangdong province in China. JUNO is a multi-purpose experiment with a wide range of applications in neutrino physics, ranging from a mass-hierarchy determination to solar, geo, and atmospheric neutrino measurements, to detecting supernovae, etc.. For many of these applications it is imperative to closely monitor the radiopurity of the liquid scintillator during the several months it will take to fill the detector. The Online Scintillator Internal Radioactivity Investigation System (OSIRIS), a 20-ton liquid scintillator detector, is being developed for this purpose and will be built in Jiangmen in 2021. In order for the OSIRIS pre-detector to achieve its goals a rigorous calibration is necessary. This calibration will consist of the lowering of radioactive sources, as well as a fast-pulsed LED, directly inside of the liquid scintillator using a fully aut...
The Borexino detector, located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, is a liquid s... more The Borexino detector, located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, is a liquid scintillator detector with a primary goal to measure low-energy neutrinos created in the core of the Sun. In comparison to photons which need around hundred thousand years to reach the surface of the Sun, solar neutrinos are able to reach the earth around eight minutes after their creation. Thus, the solar neutrino measurement opens the window to understand the properties of the Sun, namely the fusion mechanisms (pp-chain and CNO cycle) or the metallicity problem, and generally to test the predictions of the standard solar model. Furthermore, it is possible to study neutrino oscillation parameters and search for non-standard interactions through the deviations from the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein-Large-Mixing-Angle scenario (MSW-LMA). To increase the sensitivity for pep and CNO neutrinos, the multivariate fit technique has been developed, which takes into account additional information o...
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20kt liquid scintillator detector that ... more The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20kt liquid scintillator detector that will be located at Kaiping, Jiangmen city in South China. An energy resolution of 3% at 1 MeV is required to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy (MH) by spectral analysis. In this largest liquid scintillator detector, a good understanding of the position-dependence of the energy response is essential. The intrinsic non-linearity response of liquid scintillator, mainly originating from the quenching effect and Cherenkov light contribution, will cause distortion to the observed spectra. Their effects on neutrino MH sensitivity should be carefully evaluated. In this poster, firstly, a brief introduction on the sensitivity analysis tool Global Neutrino Analysis (GNA) will be given. Then the procedure to include detector response in the fitter, such as non-linearity and non-uniformity, will be illustrated. Finally, preliminary results of their impacts on neutrino MH sensitivity will be shown.
Neutrino geoscience is a newly born interdisciplinary field having as its main aim determination ... more Neutrino geoscience is a newly born interdisciplinary field having as its main aim determination of the Earth's radiogenic heat through measurement of geoneutrinos: antineutrinos released in decays of long-lived radioactive elements inside the Earth. In fact, such measurements are a unique direct way how to pin-down this key element for many geophysical and geochemical Earth's models. The large--volume liquid scintillator detectors, originally built to measure neutrinos or anti-neutrinos from other sources, are capable to detect geoneutrinos, as it was demonstrated by KamLAND (Japan) and Borexino (Italy) experiments. Several future projects as SNO+ or JUNO have geoneutrino measurements among their scientific goals. This work covers the status-of-art of this new field, summarising its potential in terms of geoscience, the status of existing experimental results, and future prospects.
Borexino is a 280-ton liquid scintillator detector located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran S... more Borexino is a 280-ton liquid scintillator detector located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. Since the start of its data-taking in May 2007, it has provided several measurements of low-energy neutrinos from various sources. At the base of its success lie unprecedented levels of radio-purity and extensive thermal stabilization, both resulting from a years-long effort of the collaboration. Solar neutrinos, emitted in the Hydrogen-to-Helium fusion in the solar core, are important for the understanding of our star, as well as neutrino properties. Borexino is the only experiment that has performed a complete spectroscopy of the pp chain solar neutrinos (with the exception of the hep neutrinos contributing to the total flux at 10−5 level), through the detection of pp, 7Be, pep, and 8B solar neutrinos and has experimentally confirmed the existence of the CNO fusion cycle in the Sun. Borexino has also detected geoneutrinos, antineutrinos from the decays of long-lived radi...
The SOX project aims to test the existence of light sterile neutrinos. A solid signal would mean ... more The SOX project aims to test the existence of light sterile neutrinos. A solid signal would mean the discovery of the first particles beyond the Standard Electroweak Model and would have profound implications in our understanding of the Universe and of fundamental particle physics. In case of a negative result, it is able to close a long standing debate about the reality of the neutrino anomalies. The SOX experiment will use a \mbox{$^{144}$Ce-$^{144}$Pr} antineutrino generator placed at short distance from the Borexino liquid scintillator detector. Particular emphasis is devoted in describing how a simulation of a neutrino detector is implemented and how it can be used to obtain useful information for the future data analysis.
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), the first multi-kton liquid scintillator de... more The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), the first multi-kton liquid scintillator detector, which is under construction in China, will have a unique potential to perform a real-time measurement of solar neutrinos well below the few MeV threshold typical of Water Cherenkov detectors. JUNO's large target mass and excellent energy resolution are prerequisites for reaching unprecedented levels of precision. In this paper, we provide estimation of the JUNO sensitivity to 7Be, pep, and CNO solar neutrinos that can be obtained via a spectral analysis above the 0.45 MeV threshold. This study is performed assuming different scenarios of the liquid scintillator radiopurity, ranging from the most optimistic one corresponding to the radiopurity levels obtained by the Borexino experiment, up to the minimum requirements needed to perform the neutrino mass ordering determination with reactor antineutrinos — the main goal of JUNO. Our study shows that in most scenarios, JUNO will b...
Neutrinos coming from the Sun have played a crucial role in the discovery of neutrino oscillation... more Neutrinos coming from the Sun have played a crucial role in the discovery of neutrino oscillations and they still are proving to be a unique and powerful tool in the investigation of the fusion reactions that power the stars, as well as representing a probe to study the basic neutrino properties. The Borexino detector has started its data acquisition in 2007 in the underground Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS) in Italy. The main goal of Borexino is the real-time study of low energy neutrinos with an energy threshold as low as about 50 keV. A first phase named Borexino Phase-I started in 2007 and ended in 2010, then after a purification campaign, data-taking resumed in 2011 with the so-called Borexino Phase-II. I will present the recent results of Borexino for the measurement of the four main solar neutrino components of the pp fusion chain (pp, pep, 7Be, 8B), and the upper limits on the remaining two solar neutrino fluxes (CNO and hep).
The Juno observatory, currently under construction in Jiangmen (China), is a 20 kt liquid scintil... more The Juno observatory, currently under construction in Jiangmen (China), is a 20 kt liquid scintillator detector. Thanks to the large fiducial volume, and thus the high statistics collectable, and excellent energy resolution, it represents a compelling opportunity for the detection of solar neutrinos. In order to be able to extract solar neutrino fluxes once data taking has started, a multivariate fitting strategy will be adopted to disentangle neutrino signals from backgrounds present in the detector. The key steps of the analysis is the estimation of signal and background rates and Monte Carlo PDF production including detector response function. The main aspects used to produce such distributions and their exploitation within the fitting procedure are explained in the following presentation. Depending on the level of contaminants within the detector, it will be possible to extract neutrino fluxes more accurately. For this reason, sensitivity studies conducted under varying backgrou...
Geoneutrinos are electron antineutrinos and neutrinos emitted in the radioactive decays from the ... more Geoneutrinos are electron antineutrinos and neutrinos emitted in the radioactive decays from the Earth's interior. Due to the intrinsic dependence of the geoneutrino flux and the heat produced in the radioactive decays, geoneutrinos contribute uniquely to our knowledge about the Earth. The main goal of neutrino geophysics is to use the measured geoneutrino signals in estimating the abundance and distribution of the heat producing elements such as 238U, 235U, 232Th and 40K. The radiogenic heat contribution, especially the mantle contribution to the total surface heat flux and the structure and homogeneity of the mantle still remain as open questions. The combination of the total geoneutrino flux (≈106 cm-2s-1) and the weak interaction cross section (≈10-42 cm-2s-1) lead to large statistical uncertainties in the current measurements. This has made the study of geoneutrinos quite challenging and so far, only two detectors, namely KamLAND and Borexino, have measured geoneutrinos.The...
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kt liquid scintillator reactor neutr... more The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kt liquid scintillator reactor neutrino experiment being built in the Guangdong province in China. JUNO is a multi-purpose experiment with a wide range of applications in neutrino physics, ranging from a mass-hierarchy determination to solar, geo, and atmospheric neutrino measurements, to detecting supernovae, etc.. For many of these applications it is imperative to closely monitor the radiopurity of the liquid scintillator during the several months it will take to fill the detector. The Online Scintillator Internal Radioactivity Investigation System (OSIRIS), a 20-ton liquid scintillator detector, is being developed for this purpose and will be built in Jiangmen in 2021. In order for the OSIRIS pre-detector to achieve its goals a rigorous calibration is necessary. This calibration will consist of the lowering of radioactive sources, as well as a fast-pulsed LED, directly inside of the liquid scintillator using a fully aut...
The Borexino detector, located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, is a liquid s... more The Borexino detector, located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, is a liquid scintillator detector with a primary goal to measure low-energy neutrinos created in the core of the Sun. In comparison to photons which need around hundred thousand years to reach the surface of the Sun, solar neutrinos are able to reach the earth around eight minutes after their creation. Thus, the solar neutrino measurement opens the window to understand the properties of the Sun, namely the fusion mechanisms (pp-chain and CNO cycle) or the metallicity problem, and generally to test the predictions of the standard solar model. Furthermore, it is possible to study neutrino oscillation parameters and search for non-standard interactions through the deviations from the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein-Large-Mixing-Angle scenario (MSW-LMA). To increase the sensitivity for pep and CNO neutrinos, the multivariate fit technique has been developed, which takes into account additional information o...
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20kt liquid scintillator detector that ... more The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20kt liquid scintillator detector that will be located at Kaiping, Jiangmen city in South China. An energy resolution of 3% at 1 MeV is required to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy (MH) by spectral analysis. In this largest liquid scintillator detector, a good understanding of the position-dependence of the energy response is essential. The intrinsic non-linearity response of liquid scintillator, mainly originating from the quenching effect and Cherenkov light contribution, will cause distortion to the observed spectra. Their effects on neutrino MH sensitivity should be carefully evaluated. In this poster, firstly, a brief introduction on the sensitivity analysis tool Global Neutrino Analysis (GNA) will be given. Then the procedure to include detector response in the fitter, such as non-linearity and non-uniformity, will be illustrated. Finally, preliminary results of their impacts on neutrino MH sensitivity will be shown.
Neutrino geoscience is a newly born interdisciplinary field having as its main aim determination ... more Neutrino geoscience is a newly born interdisciplinary field having as its main aim determination of the Earth's radiogenic heat through measurement of geoneutrinos: antineutrinos released in decays of long-lived radioactive elements inside the Earth. In fact, such measurements are a unique direct way how to pin-down this key element for many geophysical and geochemical Earth's models. The large--volume liquid scintillator detectors, originally built to measure neutrinos or anti-neutrinos from other sources, are capable to detect geoneutrinos, as it was demonstrated by KamLAND (Japan) and Borexino (Italy) experiments. Several future projects as SNO+ or JUNO have geoneutrino measurements among their scientific goals. This work covers the status-of-art of this new field, summarising its potential in terms of geoscience, the status of existing experimental results, and future prospects.
Borexino is a 280-ton liquid scintillator detector located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran S... more Borexino is a 280-ton liquid scintillator detector located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy. Since the start of its data-taking in May 2007, it has provided several measurements of low-energy neutrinos from various sources. At the base of its success lie unprecedented levels of radio-purity and extensive thermal stabilization, both resulting from a years-long effort of the collaboration. Solar neutrinos, emitted in the Hydrogen-to-Helium fusion in the solar core, are important for the understanding of our star, as well as neutrino properties. Borexino is the only experiment that has performed a complete spectroscopy of the pp chain solar neutrinos (with the exception of the hep neutrinos contributing to the total flux at 10−5 level), through the detection of pp, 7Be, pep, and 8B solar neutrinos and has experimentally confirmed the existence of the CNO fusion cycle in the Sun. Borexino has also detected geoneutrinos, antineutrinos from the decays of long-lived radi...
The SOX project aims to test the existence of light sterile neutrinos. A solid signal would mean ... more The SOX project aims to test the existence of light sterile neutrinos. A solid signal would mean the discovery of the first particles beyond the Standard Electroweak Model and would have profound implications in our understanding of the Universe and of fundamental particle physics. In case of a negative result, it is able to close a long standing debate about the reality of the neutrino anomalies. The SOX experiment will use a \mbox{$^{144}$Ce-$^{144}$Pr} antineutrino generator placed at short distance from the Borexino liquid scintillator detector. Particular emphasis is devoted in describing how a simulation of a neutrino detector is implemented and how it can be used to obtain useful information for the future data analysis.
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