Speaker
Description
In this talk, I will discuss the excellent potential of neutrino neutral current interaction with 13C in neutrino experiments. The interaction induces the excited state 13C subsequently emitting a 3.685 MeV photon from the de-excitation into the ground state. The probe of this distinctive signal can shed light in identifying the origin of the 5 MeV bump observed in reactor anti-neutrino spectra in the inverse beta decay process. For a detector that has a capability of 95% level photon and electron separation and small thorium contamination below 0.05 femtogram/gram located in a site with an overburden of about a few hundred m.w.e, such as the location of near detectors of RENO and Daya Bay will have a great sensitivity to resolve the 5 MeV bump. In addition, we propose a novel approach to track the time evolution of reactor isotopes by analyzing our 13C de-excitation signal shedding light on the contributions from 235U or 239Pu to the observed bump. This provides an extra powerful tool in both discriminating the flux models and testing any new physics possibilities for the 5 MeV bump at 3σ to 5σ
level with much less systematic uncertainties and assuming 10 kt.year of data collection. Our detector requirements are realistic, aligning well with recent studies conducted for existing or forthcoming experiments.
