JUNO sensitivity to low energy atmospheric neutrino spectra

TL;DR

This paper evaluates JUNO's potential to detect and analyze low-energy atmospheric neutrino spectra using advanced simulation and reconstruction techniques, highlighting its capability to distinguish neutrino flavors and infer energy spectra.

Contribution

The study demonstrates JUNO's ability to reconstruct atmospheric neutrino spectra and identify neutrino flavors at low energies using detailed simulations and probabilistic unfolding.

Findings

Successful reconstruction of neutrino energy spectrum between 100 MeV and 10 GeV.

Effective flavor discrimination based on scintillation light timing.

High potential for atmospheric neutrino studies at low energies with JUNO.

Abstract

Atmospheric neutrinos are one of the most relevant natural neutrino sources that can be exploited to infer properties about cosmic rays and neutrino oscillations. The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) experiment, a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector with excellent energy resolution is currently under construction in China. JUNO will be able to detect several atmospheric neutrinos per day given the large volume. A study on the JUNO detection and reconstruction capabilities of atmospheric $\nu_e$ and $\nu_\mu$ fluxes is presented in this paper. In this study, a sample of atmospheric neutrino Monte Carlo events has been generated, starting from theoretical models, and then processed by the detector simulation. The excellent timing resolution of the 3'' PMT light detection system of JUNO detector and the much higher light yield for scintillation over Cherenkov allow to measure the time structure of the scintillation light with very high precision. Since $\nu_e$ and $\nu_\mu$ interactions produce a slightly different light pattern, the different time evolution of light allows to discriminate the flavor of primary neutrinos. A probabilistic unfolding method has been used, in order to infer the primary neutrino energy spectrum from the detector experimental observables. The simulated spectrum has been reconstructed between 100 MeV and 10 GeV, showing a great potential of the detector in the atmospheric low energy region.