Large Energy Singles at JUNO from Atmospheric Neutrinos and Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper explores JUNO's potential to detect high-energy neutrino events and dark matter signals through Large Energy Singles, providing insights into atmospheric neutrinos and new physics possibilities.

Contribution

It presents a detailed study of Large Energy Singles detection at JUNO, highlighting its capability to probe new physics like dark matter interactions.

Findings

Expected ~148 events from atmospheric neutrinos at JUNO.

Backgrounds are manageable above 15 MeV energy threshold.

JUNO can effectively test various dark matter models.

Abstract

Large liquid scintillator detectors, such as JUNO, present a new opportunity to study neutral current events from the low-energy end of the atmospheric neutrinos, and possible new physics signals due to light dark matter. We carefully study the possibility of detecting ``Large Energy Singles'' (LES), i.e., events with visible scintillation energy $>15$\,MeV, but no other associated tags. For an effective exposure of 20 kton-yr and considering only Standard Model physics, we expect the LES sample to contain $\sim40$ events from scattering on free protons and $\sim 108$ events from interaction with carbon, from neutral-current interactions of atmospheric neutrinos. Backgrounds, largely due to $\beta$-decays of cosmogenic isotopes, are shown to be significant only below 15 MeV visible energy. The LES sample at JUNO can competitively probe a variety of new physics scenarios, such as boosted dark matter and annihilation of galactic dark matter to sterile neutrinos.