A comprehensive monitoring system for the thermal environment inside the Borexino neutrino detector was developed and installed in order to reduce uncertainties in determining temperatures throughout ...the detector. A complementary thermal management system limits undesirable thermal couplings between the environment and Borexino’s active sections. This strategy is bringing improved radioactive background conditions to the region of interest for the physics signal thanks to reduced fluid mixing induced in the liquid scintillator. Although fluid-dynamical equilibrium has not yet been fully reached, and thermal fine-tuning is possible, the system has proven extremely effective at stabilizing the detector’s thermal conditions while offering precise insights into its mechanisms of internal thermal transport. Furthermore, a Computational Fluid-Dynamics analysis has been performed, based on the empirical measurements provided by the thermal monitoring system, and providing information into present and future thermal trends. A two-dimensional modeling approach was implemented in order to achieve a proper understanding of the thermal and fluid-dynamics in Borexino. It was optimized for different regions and periods of interest, focusing on the most critical effects that were identified as influencing background concentrations. Literature experimental case studies were reproduced to benchmark the method and settings, and a Borexino-specific benchmark was implemented in order to validate the modeling approach for thermal transport. Finally, fully-convective models were applied to understand general and specific fluid motions impacting the detector’s Active Volume.
Precision measurements of free-neutron β decay have been used to precisely constrain our understanding of the weak interaction. However, the neutron Fierz interference term bn, which is particularly ...sensitive to beyond-standard-model tensor currents at the TeV scale, has thus far eluded measurement. Here we report the first direct constraints on this term, finding bn=0.067±0.005stat$+0.090\atop{-0.061}$sys, consistent with the standard model. Lastly, the uncertainty is dominated by absolute energy reconstruction and the linearity of the β spectrometer energy response.
First gadolinium loading to Super-Kamiokande Hiraide, K.; Imaizumi, S.; Moriyama, S. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
03/2022, Letnik:
1027
Journal Article
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In order to improve Super-Kamiokande’s neutron detection efficiency and to thereby increase its sensitivity to the diffuse supernova neutrino background flux, 13 tons of Gd2(SO4)3⋅8H2O (gadolinium ...sulfate octahydrate) was dissolved into the detector’s otherwise ultrapure water from July 14 to August 17, 2020, marking the start of the SK-Gd phase of operations. During the loading, water was continuously recirculated at a rate of 60 m3/h, extracting water from the top of the detector and mixing it with concentrated Gd2(SO4)3⋅8H2O solution to create a 0.02% solution of the Gd compound before injecting it into the bottom of the detector. A clear boundary between the Gd-loaded and pure water was maintained through the loading, enabling monitoring of the loading itself and the spatial uniformity of the Gd concentration over the 35 days it took to reach the top of the detector. During the subsequent commissioning the recirculation rate was increased to 120 m3/h, resulting in a constant and uniform distribution of Gd throughout the detector and water transparency equivalent to that of previous pure-water operation periods. Using an Am–Be neutron calibration source the mean neutron capture time was measured to be 115±1 μs, which corresponds to a Gd concentration of 111±2 ppm, as expected for this level of Gd loading. This paper describes changes made to the water circulation system for this detector upgrade, the Gd loading procedure, detector commissioning, and the first neutron calibration measurements in SK-Gd.
The charge-conjugation and parity-reversal (CP) symmetry of fundamental particles is a symmetry between matter and antimatter. Violation of this CP symmetry was first observed in 1964
, and CP ...violation in the weak interactions of quarks was soon established
. Sakharov proposed
that CP violation is necessary to explain the observed imbalance of matter and antimatter abundance in the Universe. However, CP violation in quarks is too small to support this explanation. So far, CP violation has not been observed in non-quark elementary particle systems. It has been shown that CP violation in leptons could generate the matter-antimatter disparity through a process called leptogenesis
. Leptonic mixing, which appears in the standard model's charged current interactions
, provides a potential source of CP violation through a complex phase δ
, which is required by some theoretical models of leptogenesis
. This CP violation can be measured in muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations and the corresponding antineutrino oscillations, which are experimentally accessible using accelerator-produced beams as established by the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) and NOvA experiments
. Until now, the value of δ
has not been substantially constrained by neutrino oscillation experiments. Here we report a measurement using long-baseline neutrino and antineutrino oscillations observed by the T2K experiment that shows a large increase in the neutrino oscillation probability, excluding values of δ
that result in a large increase in the observed antineutrino oscillation probability at three standard deviations (3σ). The 3σ confidence interval for δ
, which is cyclic and repeats every 2π, is -3.41, -0.03 for the so-called normal mass ordering and -2.54, -0.32 for the inverted mass ordering. Our results indicate CP violation in leptons and our method enables sensitive searches for matter-antimatter asymmetry in neutrino oscillations using accelerator-produced neutrino beams. Future measurements with larger datasets will test whether leptonic CP violation is larger than the CP violation in quarks.
Supernova detection is a major objective of the Super-Kamiokande (SK) experiment. In the next stage of SK (SK-Gd), gadolinium (Gd) sulfate will be added to the detector, which will improve the ...ability of the detector to identify neutrons. A core-collapse supernova (CCSN) will be preceded by an increasing flux of neutrinos and antineutrinos, from thermal and weak nuclear processes in the star, over a timescale of hours; some of which may be detected at SK-Gd. This could provide an early warning of an imminent CCSN, hours earlier than the detection of the neutrinos from core collapse. Electron antineutrino detection will rely on inverse beta decay events below the usual analysis energy threshold of SK, so Gd loading is vital to reduce backgrounds while maximizing detection efficiency. Assuming normal neutrino mass ordering, more than 200 events could be detected in the final 12 hr before core collapse for a 15-25 solar mass star at around 200 pc, which is representative of the nearest red supergiant to Earth, -Ori (Betelgeuse). At a statistical false alarm rate of 1 per century, detection could be up to 10 hr before core collapse, and a pre-supernova star could be detected by SK-Gd up to 600 pc away. A pre-supernova alert could be provided to the astrophysics community following gadolinium loading.
We present a search for an excess of neutrino interactions due to dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) annihilating in the Galactic center or halo based on the data ...set of Super-Kamiokande-I, -II, -III and -IV taken from 1996 to 2016. We model the neutrino flux, energy, and flavor distributions assuming WIMP self-annihilation is dominant to νν¯, μ+μ−, bb¯, or W+W−. The excess is in comparison to atmospheric neutrino interactions which are modeled in detail and fit to data. Limits on the self-annihilation cross section 〈σAV〉 are derived for WIMP masses in the range 1 GeV to 10 TeV, reaching as low as 9.6 × 10−23 cm3 s−1 for 5 GeV WIMPs in bb¯ mode and 1.2 × 10−24 cm3 s−1 for 1 GeV WIMPs in νν¯ mode. The obtained sensitivity of the Super-Kamiokande detector to WIMP masses below several tens of GeV is the best among similar indirect searches to date.
A search for proton decay into three charged leptons has been performed by using 0.37 Mton ⋅ years of data collected in Super-Kamiokande. All possible combinations of electrons, muons, and their ...antiparticles consistent with charge conservation were considered as decay modes. No significant excess of events has been found over the background, and lower limits on the proton lifetime divided by the branching ratio have been obtained. The limits range between 9.2 × 1033 and 3.4 × 1034 years at 90% confidence level, improving by more than an order of magnitude upon limits from previous experiments. A first limit has been set for the p → μ−e+e+ mode.
The T2K experiment reports updated measurements of neutrino and antineutrino oscillations using both appearance and disappearance channels. This result comes from an exposure of 14.9 (16.4) × 1020 ...protons on target in neutrino (antineutrino) mode. Significant improvements have been made to the neutrino interaction model and far detector reconstruction. An extensive set of simulated data studies have also been performed to quantify the effect interaction model uncertainties have on the T2K oscillation parameter sensitivity. T2K performs multiple oscillation analyses that present both frequentist and Bayesian intervals for the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata parameters. For fits including a constraint on sin 2θ13 from reactor data and assuming normal mass ordering T2K measures sin 2θ23 = 0.53 +0.03 −0.04 and Δm232 = (2.45 ± 0.07) × 10−3 eV2 c−4. The Bayesian analyses show a weak preference for normal mass ordering (89% posterior probability) and the upper sin 2θ23 octant (80% posterior probability), with a uniform prior probability assumed in both cases. The T2K data exclude CP conservation in neutrino oscillations at the 2σ level.
Neutrino- and antineutrino-oxygen neutral-current quasielasticlike interactions are measured at Super-Kamiokande using nuclear deexcitation γ rays to identify signal-like interactions in data from a ...14.94(16.35)×1020 protons-on-target exposure of the T2K neutrino (antineutrino) beam. The measured flux-averaged cross sections on oxygen nuclei are ⟨σν−NCQE⟩=1.70±0.17(stat.)−0.38+0.51(syst.)×10−38 cm2/oxygen with a flux-averaged energy of 0.82 GeV and ⟨σν¯−NCQE⟩=0.98±0.16(stat.)−0.19+0.26(syst.)×10−38 cm2/oxygen with a flux-averaged energy of 0.68 GeV, for neutrinos and antineutrinos, respectively. These results are the most precise to date, and the antineutrino result is the first cross section measurement of this channel. They are compared with various theoretical predictions. The impact on evaluation of backgrounds to searches for supernova relic neutrinos at present and future water Cherenkov detectors is also discussed.
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