Solar, supernova, atmospheric and geo neutrino studies using JUNO detector

TL;DR

JUNO aims to study neutrinos from supernovae, atmospheric, solar, and geo sources, enhancing understanding of neutrino properties, Earth's composition, and supernova mechanisms with its large liquid scintillator detector.

Contribution

This paper reviews JUNO's multi-source neutrino detection capabilities and estimates its potential to advance neutrino physics and geoscience.

Findings

JUNO can detect thousands of supernova neutrino events from a galactic supernova.

It may determine the neutrino mass hierarchy at up to 2.6σ after 20 years.

JUNO's large mass improves geo-neutrino measurements and Earth's composition insights.

Abstract

Aside from its primary purpose of shedding light on the mass hierarchy (MH) using reactor anti-neutrinos, the JUNO experiment in Jiangmen (China) will also contribute to study neutrinos from non-reactor sources. In this poster we review JUNO's goals in the realms of supernova, atmospheric, solar and geo-neutrinos; present the related experimental issues and provide the current estimates of its potential. For a typical galactic SN at a distance of 10 kpc, JUNO will record about 5000 events from inverse beta decay, 2000 events from elastic neutrino-proton scattering, 300 events from neutrino-electron scattering, and the charged current and neutral current interactions on the ${^{12}}{\rm C}$ nuclei. For atmospheric neutrinos, JUNO should be able to detect $\nu_e$ and $\nu_\mu$ charged current events. Optimistically, a determination of the MH could be achieved at the 1.8$\sigma$ (2.6$\sigma$) level after 10 (20) years of data taking. JUNO will also study solar neutrinos from ${^{7}}{\rm Be}$ and ${^{8}}{\rm B}$, at low ($\approx$1 MeV) and higher energies respectively, to improve our understanding of the matter effects on the oscillation mechanism and of the solar metallicity. Challenges come primarily from the radioactive and cosmogenic backgrounds: the expected performance for two benchmark scintillator radio-purities, are shown. The flux of geo-neutrinos gives us an insight on the Earth composition and formation. We will show how the increased sample size given by JUNO's large sensitive mass of 20 KTon liquid scintillator will provide data to answer to several geological questions among which the U/Th ratio and mantle measurements.