Abstract The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large liquid scintillator detector designed to explore many topics in fundamental physics. In this study, the potential of searching for proton decay in themode with JUNO is investigated. The kaon and its decay particles feature a clear three-fold coincidence signature that results in a high efficiency for identification. Moreover, the excellent energy resolution of JUNO permits suppression of the sizable background caused by other delayed signals. Based on these advantages, the detection efficiency for the proton decay viais 36.9% ± 4.9% with a background level ofevents after 10 years of data collection. The estimated sensitivity based on 200 kton-years of exposure isyears, which is competitive with the current best limits on the proton lifetime in this channel and complements the use of different detection technologies.
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Prospects for detecting the diffuse supernova neutrino background with JUNO
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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- Award ID(s):
- 2111546
- PAR ID:
- 10438163
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
- Volume:
- 2022
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 1475-7516
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 033
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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