Citation:
W. Ang, S. Prasad, and R. Mahapatra “Coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scatter response of semiconductor detectors to nuclear reactor antineutrinos”, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 1004 (2021).
Abstract:
We studied the performance of advanced semiconductor detectors to measure reactor antineutrino with the potential to drastically improve efficiency and lower existing thresholds of detectable incident-antineutrino-energy. Recent developments, such as those by the Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor (MINER) experiment at Texas A&M University, in semiconductor technologies have enabled the ability to lower the coherent-elastic-neutrino-nucleus-scatter (CENS) based detection threshold to nuclear recoil energies between 10-eV and 100-eV (Dutta et al., 2016). Existing detectors based on inverse beta decay (IBD) have a threshold of 1.806 MeV (Oralbaev et al., 2016). In this study, we calculated the CENS response of semiconductor detectors to antineutrino flux from a 1-MW(th) TRIGA reactor as a function of incident antineutrino energy. In the calculations, the reaction rates of detectors made of germanium and silicon are calculated for a 100-kg detector and placed 10 m from the core. No background radiation characterization and reduction were performed. First, the reactor antineutrino flux spectrum is obtained for the fuel composition specific to 1-MW(th) TRIGA reactor without any thresholds. Next, the standard model (SM) of physics is used to calculate the CENS cross-section as a function of incident antineutrino energy. Finally, the above two functions are convolved to provide the detector response for both, germanium and silicon detectors. The results show that germanium has a greater efficiency than silicon; however, it is shown that silicon is sensitive to lower antineutrino energies. It is found that a 100-eV nuclear recoil in germanium semiconductor detectors can be produced by a minimum incident energy of 1.84 MeV antineutrinos, and in silicon by 1.14 MeV antineutrinos. For the lower threshold, a 20-eV nuclear recoil in germanium semiconductors can be produced by a minimum incident energy of 0.82 MeV antineutrinos and in Si by 0.51 MeV antineutrinos. Lowering the detector response energy sensitivity equips us with newer techniques for nuclear fuel monitoring.