Extracting nuclear form factors with coherent neutrino scattering

Abstract

Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEνNS) can be used to determine the neutron part of nuclear form factors, unlocking intrinsic properties of nuclear structure. In contrast with other such methods, CEνNS is free from both strong interaction effects and Coulomb distortions. We propose precision measurements of CEνNS with an upcoming accelerator facility and determine the corresponding requirements for such a neutrino detector. We find that most significant backgrounds come from fast neutrons, induced by cosmogenic muons or from the pion decays at rest in the target station. With ton-scale liquid noble gas detectors, we will not only achieve percent level precision in the measurement of neutron radii but also clarify contributions of higher-order moments to nuclear form factors.

Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering at the European Spallation Source

“…I, a precision measurement of CEνNS provides a direct probe to both SM and beyond the standard model (BSM) physics. Paradigmatic examples of the former are the determination of the weak mixing angle at very low momentum transfer [27][28][29], and the study of nuclear structure [17][18][19][20]. The program of BSM exploration with CEνNS is broad (see [6-15, 21-26, 30, 32-34, 126, 127] for an incomplete list) being most sensitive to a variety of scenarios leading to modified neutrino interactions with nuclei -in particular at low momentum transfer -but extending also to the production of new light neutral states, and sterile neutrino searches, among others.…”

Physics results from the first COHERENT observation of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering in argon and their combination with cesium-iodide data

“…The observation of CEνNS scattering in argon can be used to probe the nuclear neutron distribution [3,4,16,19,50]. We fitted the COHERENT data in order to determine the neutron rms radius R n of Ar, considering for R n the lower bound in Eq.…”

Probing neutrino transition magnetic moments with coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering

“…This has prompted numerous proposals to search for physics beyond the SM [18][19][20][21] with a special focus on non-standard neutrino interactions with matter [22][23][24][25][26][27][28], sterile neutrinos [29][30][31], novel mediators [32][33][34][35] and dark matter [36,37]. Moreover, CEνNS has been also suggested as a prominent tool towards exploring important nuclear structure parameters [38,39], as well as implications for physics within [40,41] and beyond the Standard Model [42][43][44]. Very recently, it has been emphasized the need for taking into account also the incoherent channel of neutrino-nucleus scattering at momentum transfers (q) beyond the coherency frontier, e.g.…”