Hunting potassium geoneutrinos with liquid scintillator Cherenkov neutrino detectors  

作　　者：Zhe Wang Shaomin Chen 王喆;陈少敏(Department of Engineering Physics,Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084,China;Center for High Energy Physics,Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084,China)

机构地区：[1]Department of Engineering Physics,Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084,China [2]Center for High Energy Physics,Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084,China

出　　处：《Chinese Physics C》2020年第3期18-27,共10页中国物理C（英文版）

基　　金：Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(11620101004,11235006,11475093);the Ministry of Science and Technology of China(2018YFA0404102);the Key Laboratory of Particle&Radiation Imaging(Tsinghua University);the CAS Center for Excellence in Particle Physics(CCEPP)

摘　　要：The research on geoneutrinos is a new interdisciplinary subject involving particle experiments and geo-science.Potassium-40(40K)decays contribute roughly to 1/3 of the radiogenic heat of the Earth,which is not yet accounted for by experimental observation.Solar neutrino experiments with liquid scintillators have observed uranium and thorium geoneutrinos and are the most promising experiments with regard to low-background neutrino detection.In this study,we present the new concept of using liquid-scintillator Cherenkov detectors to detect the neutrino-electron elastic scattering process of 40K geoneutrinos.Liquid-scintillator Cherenkov detectors using a slow liquid scintillator achieve this goal with both energy and direction measurements for charged particles.Given the directionality,we can significantly suppress the dominant intrinsic background originating from solar neutrinos in conventional liquid-scintillator detectors.We simulated the solar-and geo-neutrino scatterings in the slow liquid scintillator detector,and implemented energy and directional reconstructions for the recoiling electrons.We found that 40K geoneutrinos can be detected with three-standard-deviation accuracy in a kiloton-scale detector.The research on geoneutrinos is a new interdisciplinary subject involving particle experiments and geo-science. Potassium-40(40K) decays contribute roughly to 1/3 of the radiogenic heat of the Earth, which is not yet accounted for by experimental observation. Solar neutrino experiments with liquid scintillators have observed uranium and thorium geoneutrinos and are the most promising experiments with regard to low-background neutrino detection.In this study, we present the new concept of using liquid-scintillator Cherenkov detectors to detect the neutrino-electron elastic scattering process of 40K geoneutrinos. Liquid-scintillator Cherenkov detectors using a slow liquid scintillator achieve this goal with both energy and direction measurements for charged particles. Given the directionality,we can significantly suppress the dominant intrinsic background originating from solar neutrinos in conventional liquid-scintillator detectors. We simulated the solar-and geo-neutrino scatterings in the slow liquid scintillator detector, and implemented energy and directional reconstructions for the recoiling electrons. We found that 40K geoneutrinos can be detected with three-standard-deviation accuracy in a kiloton-scale detector.

关 键 词：liquid-scintillator Cherenkov detector slow liquid scintillator geoneutrino 40K neutrino 

分 类 号：O572.321[理学—粒子物理与原子核物理]