Borexino

TL;DR

Borexino is a highly sensitive underground detector designed to measure solar neutrinos in real time, with recent advancements reducing background noise to enable detection of additional neutrino types and other cosmic sources.

Contribution

The paper introduces Borexino's capabilities for real-time solar neutrino detection and demonstrates background reduction techniques for observing pep and CNO neutrinos.

Findings

Successful measurement of $^{7}Be$ solar neutrinos.

Reduction of $^{11}C$ background enables detection of pep and CNO neutrinos.

Potential for detecting supernova and geoneutrinos.

Abstract

Borexino is a massive calorimetric liquid scintillation detector whose installation has been completed in the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory. The focus of the experiment is on the direct and real time measurement of the flux of neutrinos produced in the $^{7}Be$ electron capture reaction in the Sun. Furthermore, recent studies about the reduction of the $^{11}C$ background through suitable rejection techniques demonstrated the possibility to open an interesting additional observation window in the energy region of the pep and CNO solar neutrinos. Beyond the solar neutrino program, the detector will be also a powerful observatory for antineutrinos from Supernovae, as well as for geoneutrinos, profiting from a very low background from nuclear reactors.