Physics reach of a low threshold scintillating argon bubble chamber in coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering reactor experiments
L. J. Flores, Eduardo Peinado, E. Alfonso-Pita, K. Allen, M. Baker, E. Behnke, M. Bressler, K. Clark, R. Coppejans, C. Cripe, M. Crisler, C. E. Dahl, A. De St. Croix, Daniel Durnford, P. Giampa, O. Harris, P. Hatch, H. Hawley-Herrera, C. M. Jackson, Youngju Ko, C. B. Krauss, N. Lamb, M. Laurin, I. Levine, W. H. Lippincott, R. Neilson, Sanjoy Kumar Pal, M.-C. Piro, Z. Sheng, E. Vázquez-Jáuregui, T. J. Whitis, S. Windle, R. Zhang, A. Zuñiga-Reyes, <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi>CE</mi><mi>ν</mi><mi>NS</mi></mrow></math> Theory Group at IF-UNAM
Abstract
The physics reach of a low threshold (100 eV) scintillating argon bubble chamber sensitive to coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering ($\mathrm{CE}\ensuremath{\nu}\mathrm{NS}$) from reactor neutrinos is studied. The sensitivity to the weak mixing angle, neutrino magnetic moment, and a light ${Z}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ gauge boson mediator are analyzed. A Monte Carlo simulation of the backgrounds is performed to assess their contribution to the signal. The analysis shows that world-leading sensitivities are achieved with a one-year exposure for a 10 kg chamber at 3 m from a $1\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{MW}}_{th}$ research reactor or a 100 kg chamber at 30 m from a $2000\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{MW}}_{th}$ power reactor. Such a detector has the potential to become the leading technology to study $\mathrm{CE}\ensuremath{\nu}\mathrm{NS}$ using nuclear reactors.