Scholarly Works, Center for Neutrino Physics

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Direct detection of light dark matter charged under a L μ - L τ symmetry
Figueroa, Pablo; Herrera, Gonzalo; Ochoa, Fredy (American Physical Society, 2024-11-18)
A possible extension of the Standard Model able to explain the recent measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon consists in adding a gauged U ( 1 ) L mu -L tau symmetry. If the dark matter particle is charged under this symmetry, then the kinetic mixing between the new gauge boson and the photon induces dark matter-electron interactions. We derive direct detection constraints on light dark matter charged under a U ( 1 ) L mu -L tau symmetry with electron recoil experiments and explore prospects with XLZD and OSCURA to close in the parameter space able to explain simultaneously the recent measurement on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the observed relic density of dark matter. We further discuss the spin-dependent scattering contribution arising in this model, which was ignored previously in the literature.
Search for Fractionally Charged Particles with CUORE
Adams, D. Q.; Alduino, C.; Alfonso, K.; Avignone, F. T., III; Azzolini, O.; Bari, G.; Bellini, F.; Benato, G.; Beretta, M.; Biassoni, M.; Branca, A.; Brofferio, C.; Bucci, C.; Camilleri, J.; Caminata, A.; Campani, A.; Cao, J.; Capelli, S.; Capelli, C.; Cappelli, L.; Cardani, L.; Carniti, P.; Casali, N.; Celi, E.; Chiesa, D.; Clemenza, M.; Copello, S.; Cremonesi, O.; Creswick, R. J.; D'Addabbo, A.; Dafinei, I.; Del Corso, F.; Dell'Oro, S.; Di Domizio, S.; Di Lorenzo, S.; Dixon, T.; Dompe, V.; Fang, D. Q.; Fantini, G.; Faverzani, M.; Ferri, E.; Ferroni, F.; Fiorini, E.; Franceschi, M. A.; Freedman, S. J.; Fu, S. H.; Fujikawa, B. K.; Ghislandi, S.; Giachero, A.; Girola, M.; Gironi, L.; Giuliani, A.; Gorla, P.; Gotti, C.; Guillaumon, P. V.; Gutierrez, T. D.; Han, K.; Hansen, E. V.; Heeger, K. M.; Helis, D. L.; Huang, H. Z.; Keppel, G.; Kolomensky, Yu G.; Kowalski, R.; Liu, R.; Ma, L.; Ma, Y. G.; Marini, L.; Maruyama, R. H.; Mayer, D.; Mei, Y.; Moore, M. N.; Napolitano, T.; Nastasi, M.; Nones, C.; Norman, E. B.; Nucciotti, A.; Nutini, I.; O'Donnell, T.; Olmi, M.; Oregui, B. T.; Ouellet, J. L.; Pagan, S.; Pagliarone, C. E.; Pagnanini, L.; Pallavicini, M.; Pattavina, L.; Pavan, M.; Pessina, G.; Pettinacci, V.; Pira, C.; Pirro, S.; Pottebaum, E. G.; Pozzi, S.; Previtali, E.; Puiu, A.; Quitadamo, S.; Ressa, A.; Rosenfeld, C.; Schmidt, B.; Sharma, V.; Singh, V.; Sisti, M.; Speller, D.; Stark, P.; Surukuchi, P. T.; Taffarello, L.; Tomei, C.; Torres, A.; Torres, J. A.; Vetter, K. J.; Vignati, M.; Wagaarachchi, S. L.; Welliver, B.; Wilson, J.; Wilson, K.; Winslow, L. A.; Zimmermann, S.; Zucchelli, S. (American Physical Society, 2024-12-12)
The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) is a detector array comprised by 988 5 cm x 5 cm x 5 cm TeO2 crystals held below 20 mK, primarily searching for neutrinoless doublebeta decay in Te-130. Unprecedented in size among cryogenic calorimetric experiments, CUORE provides a promising setting for the study of exotic throughgoing particles. Using the first tonne year of CUORE's exposure, we perform a search for hypothesized fractionally charged particles (FCPs), which are well-motivated by various standard model extensions and would have suppressed interactions with matter. Across the searched range of charges e/24 - e/2 no excess of FCP candidate tracks is observed over background, setting leading limits on the underground FCP flux with charges e/24 - e/5 at 90% confidence level. Using the low background environment and segmented geometry of CUORE, we establish the sensitivity of tonne-scale subkelvin detectors to diverse signatures of new physics.
Heavy Neutral Leptons via Axionlike Particles at Neutrino Facilities
Abdullahi, Asli M.; de Gouvea, Andre; Dutta, Bhaskar; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Tabrizi, Zahra (American Physical Society, 2024-12-24)
Heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) are often among the hypothetical ingredients behind nonzero neutrino masses. If sufficiently light, they can be produced and detected in fixed-target-like experiments. We show that if the HNLs belong to a richer-but rather generic-dark sector, their production mechanism can deviate dramatically from expectations associated with the standard-model weak interactions. In more detail, we postulate that the dark sector contains an axionlike particle (ALP) that naturally decays into HNLs. Since ALPs mix with the pseudoscalar hadrons, the HNL flux might be predominantly associated with the production of neutral mesons (e.g., pi(0), eta) as opposed to charge hadrons (e.g., pi(+/-), K-+/-). In this case, the physics responsible for HNL production and decay are not directly related and experiments like DUNE might be sensitive to HNLs that are too weakly coupled to the standard model to be produced via weak interactions, as is generically the case of HNLs that play a direct role in the type-I seesaw mechanism.
Nucleon Decays into Light New Particles in Neutrino Detectors
Heeck, Julian; Shoemaker, Ian M. (American Physical Society, 2025-09-11)
Proton and neutron decays into light new particles X can drastically change the experimental signatures and benefit from the complementarity of large water-Cherenkov neutrino detectors such as Super- and Hyper-Kamiokande and tracking detectors such as JUNO and DUNE. The proton decays p → 𝓁⁺X and p → π⁺X with mX near phase-space closure lead to charged particles below the Cherenkov threshold, rendering them practically invisible in Super- and Hyper-Kamiokande but not in JUNO and DUNE, which are therefore uniquely positioned for these baryon-number-violating signatures despite their smaller size. As an additional signature, such nucleon decays in the Earth can produce a sizable flux of X particles in underground detectors.We present a simple model in which nucleons decay into sub-GeV sterile neutrinos that subsequently decay through active-sterile neutrino mixing, with a promisingly large number of events in Super-Kamiokande even in the seesaw-motivated parameter space.
A gravity-based mounting approach for large-scale cryogenic calorimeter arrays
Alfonso, Krystal; CUPID Collaboration (2025-09-02)
Cryogenic calorimeters are among the leading technologies for searching for rare events. The CUPID experiment is exploiting this technology to deploy a tonne-scale detector to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of 100 Mo. The CUPID collaboration proposed an innovative approach to assembling cryogenic calorimeters in a stacked configuration, held in position solely by gravity. This gravity-based assembly method is unprecedented in the field of cryogenic calorimeters and offers several advantages, including relaxed mechanical tolerances and simplified construction. To assess and optimize its performance, we constructed a medium-scale prototype hosting 28 Li 2 MoO 4 crystals and 30 Ge light detectors, both operated as cryogenic calorimeters at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Italy). Despite an unexpected excess of noise in the light detectors, the results of this test proved (i) a thermal stability better than ±0.5 mK at 10 mK, (ii) a good energy resolution of Li 2 MoO 4 cryogenic calorimeters, (6.6 ± 2.2) keV FWHM at 2615 keV, and (iii) a Li 2 MoO 4 light yield measured by the closest light detector of 0.36 keV/MeV, sufficient to guarantee the particle identification requested by CUPID.
Clarity through the neutrino fog: constraining new forces in dark matter detectors
Blanco-Mas, Pablo; Coloma, Pilar; Herrera, Gonzalo; Huber, Patrick; Kopp, Joachim; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Tabrizi, Zahra (2025-08-06)
The PandaX-4T and XENONnT experiments present indications of Coherent Elastic Neutrino Nucleus Scattering (CEνNS) from 8B solar neutrinos at 2.6σ and 2.7σ, respectively. This constitutes the first observation of the neutrino “floor” or “fog”, an irreducible background that future dark matter searches in terrestrial detectors will have to contend with. Here, we first discuss the contributions from neutrino–electron scattering and from the Migdal effect in the region of interest of these experiments, and we argue that they are non-negligible. Second, we make use of the recent PandaX-4T and XENONnT data to derive novel constraints on light scalar and vector mediators coupling to neutrinos and quarks. We demonstrate that these experiments already provide world-leading laboratory constraints on new light mediators in some regions of parameter space.
Sterile-active resonance: A global qualitative picture
Brettell, Mark; Martinez-Soler, Ivan; Minakata, Hisakazu (2025-04-01)
In the νSM extended by adding an eV-scale sterile state, the (3 + 1) model, the sterile-active level crossing entails the MSW resonance, here referred as the sterile-active (SA) resonance. In this paper, we construct an effective theory of SA resonance which involves only the sterile-active mixing angles and ∆ m 41 2 , thanks to the given environment of high matter potential which freezes the νSM oscillations. We give our first attempt at an analytic treatment of the effective theory to illuminate the global picture of the SA resonance at a glance. We formulate a perturbative framework in which the structure of “texture zeros” of the S matrix in the flavor space and the suppression by the small parameters sin θj4 (j = 1, 2, 3) allows us to reveal the flavor–event-type hierarchy of the resonance-effect strength in the probabilities. We have shown that the cascade events dominantly comes from the three paths through P(νe → νe), P( ν ¯ e → ν ¯ e ), and P( ν ¯ μ → ν ¯ τ ), and a three-component fit is suggested to disentangle the SA resonance generation mechanisms.
COHERENT: Latest Results and Future Prospects
Link, Jonathan M. (2024-10-31)
Demonstration of neutron identification in neutrino interactions in the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber
Abratenko, P.; Alterkait, O.; Aldana, D. A.; Arellano, L.; Asaadi, J.; Ashkenazi, A.; Balasubramanian, S.; Baller, B.; Barnard, A.; Barr, G.; Barrow, D.; Barrow, J.; Basque, V.; Bateman, J.; Rodrigues, O. B.; Berkman, S.; Bhanderi, A.; Bhat, A.; Bhattacharya, M.; Bishai, M.; Blake, A.; Bogart, B.; Bolton, T.; Book, J. Y.; Brunetti, M. B.; Camilleri, L.; Cao, Y.; Caratelli, D.; Cavanna, F.; Cerati, G.; Chappell, A.; Chen, Y.; Conrad, J. M.; Convery, M.; Cooper-Troendle, L.; Crespo-Anadón, J. I.; Cross, R.; Del Tutto, M.; Dennis, S. R.; Detje, P.; Diurba, R.; Djurcic, Z.; Dorrill, R.; Duffy, K.; Dytman, S.; Eberly, B.; Englezos, P.; Ereditato, A.; Evans, J. J.; Fine, R.; Foreman, W.; Fleming, B. T.; Franco, D.; Furmanski, A. P.; Gao, F.; Garcia-Gamez, D.; Gardiner, S.; Ge, G.; Gollapinni, S.; Gramellini, E.; Green, P.; Greenlee, H.; Gu, L.; Gu, W.; Guenette, R.; Guzowski, P.; Hagaman, L.; Handley, M. D.; Hen, O.; Hilgenberg, C.; Horton-Smith, G. A.; Imani, Z.; Irwin, B.; Ismail, M. S.; James, C.; Ji, X.; Jo, J. H.; Johnson, R. A.; Jwa, Y.-J.; Kalra, D.; Kamp, N.; Karagiorgi, G.; Ketchum, W.; Kirby, M.; Kobilarcik, T.; Kreslo, I.; Lane, N.; Li, J.-Y.; Li, Y.; Lin, K.; Littlejohn, B. R.; Liu, H.; Louis, W. C.; Luo, X.; Mariani, Camillo; Marsden, D.; Marshall, J.; Martinez, N.; Caicedo, D. A. M.; Martynenko, S.; Mastbaum, A.; Mawby, I.; McConkey, N.; Meddage, V.; Mendez, J.; Micallef, J.; Miller, K.; Mogan, A.; Mohayai, T.; Mooney, M.; Moor, A. F.; Moore, C. D.; Lepin, L. M.; Moudgalya, M. M.; Mulleriababu, S.; Naples, D.; Navrer-Agasson, A.; Nayak, N.; Nebot-Guinot, M.; Nguyen, C.; Nowak, J.; Oza, N.; Palamara, O.; Pallat, N.; Paolone, V.; Papadopoulou, A.; Papavassiliou, V.; Parkinson, H. B.; Pate, S. F.; Patel, N.; Pavlovic, Z.; Piasetzky, E.; Pletcher, K.; Pophale, I.; Qian, X.; Raaf, J. L.; Radeka, V.; Rafique, A.; Reggiani-Guzzo, M.; Ren, L.; Rochester, L.; Rondon, J. R.; Rosenberg, M.; Ross-Lonergan, M.; Safa, I.; Schmitz, D. W.; Schukraft, A.; Seligman, W.; Shaevitz, M. H.; Sharankova, R.; Shi, J.; Snider, E. L.; Soderberg, M.; Söldner-Rembold, S.; Spitz, J.; Stancari, M.; John, J. S.; Strauss, T.; Szelc, A. M.; Tang, W.; Taniuchi, N.; Terao, K.; Thorpe, C.; Torbunov, D.; Totani, D.; Toups, M.; Trettin, A.; Tsai, Y.-T.; Tyler, J.; Uchida, M. A.; Usher, T.; Viren, B.; Wang, J.; Weber, M.; Wei, H.; White, A. J.; Wolbers, S.; Wongjirad, T.; Wospakrik, M.; Wresilo, K.; Wu, W.; Yandel, E.; Yang, T.; Yates, L. E.; Yu, H. W.; Zeller, G. P.; Zennamo, J.; Zhang, C. (2024-10-14)
A significant challenge in measurements of neutrino oscillations is reconstructing the incoming neutrino energies. While modern fully-active tracking calorimeters such as liquid argon time projection chambers in principle allow the measurement of all final state particles above some detection threshold, undetected neutrons remain a considerable source of missing energy with little to no data constraining their production rates and kinematics. We present the first demonstration of tagging neutrino-induced neutrons in liquid argon time projection chambers using secondary protons emitted from neutron-argon interactions in the MicroBooNE detector. We describe the method developed to identify neutrino-induced neutrons and demonstrate its performance using neutrons produced in muon-neutrino charged current interactions. The method is validated using a small subset of MicroBooNE’s total dataset. The selection yields a sample with 60 % of selected tracks corresponding to neutron-induced secondary protons. At this purity, the integrated efficiency is 8.4% for neutrons that produce a detectable proton.
Scintillation light in SBND: simulation, reconstruction, and expected performance of the photon detection system
Mariani, Camillo (2024-10-10)
SBND is the near detector of the Short-Baseline Neutrino program at Fermilab. Its location near to the Booster Neutrino Beam source and relatively large mass will allow the study of neutrino interactions on argon with unprecedented statistics. This paper describes the expected performance of the SBND photon detection system, using a simulated sample of beam neutrinos and cosmogenic particles. Its design is a dual readout concept combining a system of 120 photomultiplier tubes, used for triggering, with a system of 192 X-ARAPUCA devices, located behind the anode wire planes. Furthermore, covering the cathode plane with highly-reflective panels coated with a wavelength-shifting compound recovers part of the light emitted towards the cathode, where no optical detectors exist. We show how this new design provides a high light yield and a more uniform detection efficiency, an excellent timing resolution and an independent 3D-position reconstruction using only the scintillation light. Finally, the whole reconstruction chain is applied to recover the temporal structure of the beam spill, which is resolved with a resolution on the order of nanoseconds.
Impact of the cosmic neutrino background on long-range force searches
Chauhan, Garv; Xu, Xun-Jie (2024-07-26)
Light bosons can mediate long-range forces. We show that light bosonic mediators interacting with a background medium, in particular, with the cosmic neutrino background (CνB), may induce medium-dependent masses which could effectively screen long-range forces from detection. This leads to profound implications for long-range force searches in e.g. the Eöt-Wash, MICROSCOPE, and lunar laser-ranging (LLR) experiments. For instance, we find that when the coupling of the mediator to neutrinos is above 3 × 10−10 or 5 × 10−13, bounds from LLR and experiments employing the Sun as an attractor, respectively, would be entirely eliminated. Larger values of the coupling can also substantially alleviate bounds from searches conducted at shorter distances.
A neutrino floor for the Migdal effect
Herrera, Gonzalo (2024-05-24)
Neutrino-nucleus scatterings in the detector could induce electron ionization signatures due to the Migdal effect. We derive prospects for a future detection of the Migdal effect via coherent elastic solar neutrino-nucleus scatterings in liquid xenon detectors, and discuss the irreducible background that it constitutes for the Migdal effect caused by light dark matter-nucleus scatterings. Furthermore, we explore the ionization signal induced by some neutrino electromagnetic and non-standard interactions on nuclei. In certain scenarios, we find a distinct peak on the ionization spectrum of xenon around 0.1 keV, in clear contrast to the Standard Model expectation.
Improving the performance of cryogenic calorimeters with nonlinear multivariate noise cancellation algorithms
Vetter, K. J.; Beretta, M.; Capelli, C.; Corso, F. D.; Hansen, E. V.; Huang, R. G.; Kolomensky, Yu. G.; Marini, L.; Nutini, I.; Singh, V.; Torres, A.; Welliver, B.; Zimmermann, S.; Zucchelli, S. (2024-03-08)
State-of-the-art physics experiments require high-resolution, low-noise, and low-threshold detectors to achieve competitive scientific results. However, experimental environments invariably introduce sources of noise, such as electrical interference or microphonics. The sources of this environmental noise can often be monitored by adding specially designed “auxiliary devices” (e.g. microphones, accelerometers, seismometers, magnetometers, and antennae). A model can then be constructed to predict the detector noise based on the auxiliary device information, which can then be subtracted from the true detector signal. Here, we present a multivariate noise cancellation algorithm which can be used in a variety of settings to improve the performance of detectors using multiple auxiliary devices. To validate this approach, we apply it to simulated data to remove noise due to electromagnetic interference and microphonic vibrations. We then employ the algorithm to a cryogenic light detector in the laboratory and show an improvement in the detector performance. Finally, we motivate the use of nonlinear terms to better model vibrational contributions to the noise in thermal detectors. We show a further improvement in the performance of a particular channel of the CUORE detector when using the nonlinear algorithm in combination with optimal filtering techniques.
Interference and oscillation in Nambu quantum mechanics
Minic, Djordje; Takeuchi, Tatsu; Tze, Chia Hsiung (American Physical Society, 2021-09-10)
Nambu quantum mechanics, proposed in [Phys. Lett. B 536, 305 (2002)PYLBAJ0370-269310.1016/S0370-2693(02)01865-8], is a deformation of canonical quantum mechanics in which only the time-evolution of the "phases"of energy eigenstates is modified. We discuss the effect this theory will have on oscillation phenomena, and place a bound on the deformation parameters utilizing the data on the atmospheric neutrino mixing angle θ23.
CHANDLER: A Technology for Surface-level Reactor Neutrino Detection
Link, Jonathan M. (2023-01-17)
The CHANDLER Antineutrino Detection System and Nuclear Reactor Monitoring
Link, Jonathan M. (2023-10-20)
Probing new physics at DUNE operating in a beam-dump mode
Brdar, Vedran; Dutta, Bhaskar; Jang, Wooyoung; Kim, Doojin; Shoemaker, Ian M.; Tabrizi, Zahra; Thompson, Adrian; Yu, Jaehoon (American Physical Society, 2023-03)
In this work we demonstrate that a future accelerator-based neutrino experiment such as DUNE can greatly increase its sensitivity to a variety of new physics scenarios by operating in a mode where the proton beam impinges on a beam dump. We consider two new physics scenarios, namely light dark matter and axionlike particles and show that by utilizing a dump mode at a DUNE-like experiment, unexplored new regions of parameter space can be probed with an exposure of only 3 months with half of its expected initial beam power. Specifically, targetless configuration of future high intensity neutrino experiments will probe the parameter space for thermal relic dark matter as well as the QCD axion. The strength of such a configuration in the context of new physics searches stems from the fact that the neutrino flux is significantly reduced compared to that of the target, resulting in much smaller backgrounds from neutrino interactions. We have verified this in detail by explicitly computing neutrino fluxes which we make publicly available in order to facilitate further studies with a targetless configuration.
Gravity-improved metastability bounds for the Type-I seesaw mechanism
Chauhan, Garv; Steingasser, Thomas (2023-09-22)
Right-handed neutrinos (RHN) destabilize the electroweak vacuum by increasing its decay rate. In the SM, the latter is dominated by physics at the RG scale at which λ reaches its minimum, 𝜇SM∗ ∼ 1017 GeV. For large neutrino Yukawa coupling Yν, RHNs can push μ* beyond the Planck scale, implying that gravitational effects need to be taken into account. In this work, we perform the first comprehensive study of electroweak vacuum metastability in the type-I seesaw mechanism including these effects. Our analysis covers both low- and high-scale seesaw models, with two as well as three RHNs and for multiple values of the Higgs’ non-minimal coupling to gravity. We find that gravitational effects can significantly stabilize the vacuum, leading to weaker metastability bounds. We show that metastability sets the strongest bounds for low-scale seesaws with MN > 1 TeV. For high-scale seesaws, we find upper bounds on the allowed masses for the RHNs, which are relevant for high-scale leptogenesis. We also point out that Tr(𝑌†𝜈Yν), which is commonly used to express these metastability bounds, cannot be used for all of parameter space. Instead, we argue that bounds can always be expressed reliably through Tr(𝑌†𝜈Yν𝑌†𝜈Yν). Lastly, we use this insight to develop a new technique for an easier RG analysis applicable to scenarios with degenerate RHN masses.
The Andromeda gamma-ray excess: background systematics of the millisecond pulsars and dark matter interpretations
Zimmer, Fabian; Macias, Oscar; Ando, Shin'ichiro; Crocker, Roland M.; Horiuchi, Shunsaku (Oxford University Press, 2022-09)
Since the discovery of an excess in gamma rays in the direction of M31, its cause has been unclear. Published interpretations focus on dark matter or stellar related origins. Studies of a similar excess in the Milky Way centre motivate a correlation of the spatial morphology of the signal with the distribution of stellar mass in M31. However, a robust determination of the best theory for the observed excess emission is challenging due to uncertainties in the astrophysical gamma-ray foreground model. We perform a spectro-morphological analysis of the M31 gamma-ray excess using state-of-the-art templates for the distribution of stellar mass in M31 and novel astrophysical foreground models for its sky region. We construct maps for the old stellar populations of M31 based on data from the PAndAS survey and carefully remove the foreground stars. We also produce improved astrophysical foreground models via novel image inpainting techniques based on machine learning methods. Our stellar maps, mimicking the location of a population of millisecond pulsars in the bulge of M31, reach a 5.4 sigma significance, making them as strongly favoured as the simple phenomenological models usually considered in the literature, e.g. disc-like templates. This detection is robust to generous variations of the astrophysical foreground model. Once the stellar templates are included in the astrophysical model, we show that the dark matter annihilation interpretation of the signal is unwarranted. We demonstrate that about one million unresolved millisecond pulsars naturally explain the observed gamma-ray luminosity per stellar mass, energy spectrum, and stellar bulge-to-disc flux ratio.
Neutrino portals, terrestrial upscattering, and atmospheric neutrinos
Gustafson, R. Andrew; Plestid, Ryan; Shoemaker, Ian M. (American Physical Society, 2022-11)
We consider the upscattering of atmospheric neutrinos in the interior of Earth producing heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) which subsequently decay inside large volume detectors (e.g., Super-Kamiokande or DUNE). We compute the flux of upscattered HNLs arriving at a detector and the resultant event rate of visible decay products. Using Super-Kamiokande's atmospheric neutrino dataset we find new leading constraints for dipole couplings to any flavor with HNL masses between roughly 10 and 100 MeV. For mass mixing with tau neutrinos, we probe new parameter space near HNL masses of similar to 20 MeV with prospects for substantial future improvements. We also discuss prospects at future experiments such as DUNE, JUNO, and Hyper-Kamiokande.

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