Solar neutrino interactions with liquid scintillators used for double beta decay experiments

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how solar neutrinos interact with liquid scintillator detectors used in double beta decay experiments, highlighting their significant background contribution that impacts the search for Majorana neutrino masses.

Contribution

It provides a detailed assessment of solar neutrino interactions as backgrounds in liquid scintillator DBD experiments, emphasizing their importance for high-sensitivity neutrino mass searches.

Findings

Solar neutrinos contribute significant backgrounds in DBD detectors.

Interactions with electrons and nuclei are key sources of background.

Background levels are critical for future high-sensitivity experiments.

Abstract

Solar neutrinos interact with double beta decay detectors (DBD) and hence will contribute to backgrounds (BG) for DBD experiments. Background contributions due to solar neutrinos are evaluated for their interactions with atomic electrons and nuclei in liquid scintillation detectors used for DBD experiments. They are shown to be serious backgrounds for high sensitivity DBD experiments to search for the Majorana neutrino masses in the inverted and normal hierarchy regions.