Testing for coherence and nonstandard neutrino interactions in COHERENT data

TL;DR

This paper analyzes COHERENT experiment data to confirm standard model predictions of neutrino-nucleus scattering and explores how combined data can break degeneracies related to nonstandard neutrino interactions.

Contribution

It provides the first combined analysis of multiple datasets to test coherence and nonstandard neutrino interactions in neutrino scattering experiments.

Findings

Confirmed the proportionality of scattering cross section to neutron number squared within 1.5σ

Demonstrated how combined data breaks degeneracies in nonstandard interaction parameters

Supported the standard model prediction for neutrino-nucleus coherent scattering

Abstract

We analyze data from the CsI, liquid Ar and Ge detectors of the COHERENT experiment and confirm within $1.5\sigma$ that the measured elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering cross section is proportional to the square of the number of neutrons in the nucleus, as expected for coherent scattering in the standard model. We also show how various degeneracies involving nonstandard neutrino interaction parameters are broken in a combined analysis of the three datasets.