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1. Sensitivity to neutrinos from the solar CNO cycle in Borexino

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-08534-2  

   Agostini, M. ; Altenmüller, K. ; Appel, S. ; Atroshchenko, V. ; Bagdasarian, Z. ; Basilico, D. ; Bellini, G. ; Benziger, J. ; Biondi, R. ; Bravo, D. ; et al ( November 2020 , The European Physical Journal C)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Neutrinos emitted in the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen (CNO) fusion cycle in the Sun are a sub-dominant, yet crucial component of solar neutrinos whose flux has not been measured yet. The Borexino experiment at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Italy) has a unique opportunity to detect them directly thanks to the detector’s radiopurity and the precise understanding of the detector backgrounds. We discuss the sensitivity of Borexino to CNO neutrinos, which is based on the strategies we adopted to constrain the rates of the two most relevant background sources, $$pep$$ pep neutrinos from the solar pp -chain and $$^{210}$$ 210 Bi beta decays originating in the intrinsic contamination of the liquid scintillator with $$^{210}$$ 210 Pb. Assuming the CNO flux predicted by the high-metallicity Standard Solar Model and an exposure of 1000 days $$\times $$ × 71.3 t, Borexino has a median sensitivity to CNO neutrino higher than 3 $$\sigma $$ σ . With the same hypothesis the expected experimental uncertainty on the CNO neutrino flux is 23%, provided the uncertainty on the independent estimate of the $$^{210}\text {Bi}$$ 210 Bi  interaction rate is 1.5 $$\hbox {cpd}/100~\hbox {ton}$$ cpd / 100 ton  . Finally, we evaluated the expected uncertainty of the C and N abundances and the expected discrimination significance between the high and low metallicity Standard Solar Models (HZ and LZ) with future more precise measurement of the CNO solar neutrino flux. 

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2. The design and sensitivity of JUNO’s scintillator radiopurity pre-detector OSIRIS

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09544-4  

   Abusleme, Angel ; Adam, Thomas ; Ahmad, Shakeel ; Ahmed, Rizwan ; Aiello, Sebastiano ; Akram, Muhammad ; An, Fengpeng ; An, Guangpeng ; An, Qi ; Andronico, Giuseppe ; et al ( November 2021 , The European Physical Journal C)

   Abstract The OSIRIS detector is a subsystem of the liquid scintillator filling chain of the JUNO reactor neutrino experiment. Its purpose is to validate the radiopurity of the scintillator to assure that all components of the JUNO scintillator system work to specifications and only neutrino-grade scintillator is filled into the JUNO Central Detector. The aspired sensitivity level of $$10^{-16}\hbox { g/g}$$ 10 - 16 g/g of $$^{238}\hbox {U}$$ 238 U and $$^{232}\hbox {Th}$$ 232 Th requires a large ( $$\sim 20\,\hbox {m}^3$$ ∼ 20 m 3 ) detection volume and ultralow background levels. The present paper reports on the design and major components of the OSIRIS detector, the detector simulation as well as the measuring strategies foreseen and the sensitivity levels to U/Th that can be reached in this setup. 

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3. Prospects for detecting the diffuse supernova neutrino background with JUNO

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2022/10/033  

   Abusleme, Angel ; Adam, Thomas ; Ahmad, Shakeel ; Ahmed, Rizwan ; Aiello, Sebastiano ; Akram, Muhammad ; An, Fengpeng ; An, Qi ; Andronico, Giuseppe ; Anfimov, Nikolay ; et al ( October 2022 , Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics)

   Abstract We present the detection potential for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB) at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), using the inverse-beta-decay (IBD) detection channel on free protons. We employ the latest information on the DSNB flux predictions, and investigate in detail the background and its reduction for the DSNB search at JUNO. The atmospheric neutrino induced neutral current (NC) background turns out to be the most critical background, whose uncertainty is carefully evaluated from both the spread of model predictions and an envisaged in situ measurement. We also make a careful study on the background suppression with the pulse shape discrimination (PSD) and triple coincidence (TC) cuts. With latest DSNB signal predictions, more realistic background evaluation and PSD efficiency optimization, and additional TC cut, JUNO can reach the significance of 3σ for 3 years of data taking, and achieve better than 5σ after 10 years for a reference DSNB model. In the pessimistic scenario of non-observation, JUNO would strongly improve the limits and exclude a significant region of the model parameter space. 

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4. JUNO sensitivity to low energy atmospheric neutrino spectra

   https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09565-z  

   Abusleme, Angel ; Adam, Thomas ; Ahmad, Shakeel ; Ahmed, Rizwan ; Aiello, Sebastiano ; Akram, Muhammad ; An, Fengpeng ; An, Guangpeng ; An, Qi ; Andronico, Giuseppe ; et al ( October 2021 , The European Physical Journal C)

   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 $$\nu _e$$ ν e  and $$\nu _\mu $$ ν μ  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 $$\nu _e$$ ν e  and $$\nu _\mu $$ ν μ  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. 

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5. Core-collapse supernova neutrino emission and detection informed by state-of-the-art three-dimensional numerical models

   https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2691  

   Nagakura, Hiroki ; Burrows, Adam ; Vartanyan, David ; Radice, David ( November 2020 , Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

   null (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT Based on our recent three-dimensional core-collapse supernova (CCSN) simulations including both exploding and non-exploding models, we study the detailed neutrino signals in representative terrestrial neutrino observatories, namely Super-Kamiokande (Hyper-Kamiokande), DUNE, JUNO, and IceCube. We find that the physical origin of difference in the neutrino signals between 1D and 3D is mainly proto-neutron-star convection. We study the temporal and angular variations of the neutrino signals and discuss the detectability of the time variations driven by the spiral standing accretion shock instability (spiral SASI) when it emerges for non-exploding models. In addition, we determine that there can be a large angular asymmetry in the event rate (${\gtrsim} 50 {{\ \rm per\ cent}}$), but the time-integrated signal has a relatively modest asymmetry (${\lesssim} 20 {{\ \rm per\ cent}}$). Both features are associated with the lepton-number emission self-sustained asymmetry and the spiral SASI. Moreover, our analysis suggests that there is an interesting correlation between the total neutrino energy (TONE) and the cumulative number of neutrino events in each detector, a correlation that can facilitate data analyses of real observations. We demonstrate the retrieval of neutrino energy spectra for all flavours of neutrino by applying a novel spectrum reconstruction technique to the data from multiple detectors. We find that this new method is capable of estimating the TONE within the error of ∼20 per cent if the distance to the CCSN is ≲6 kpc. 

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