Particle background characterization and prediction for the NUCLEUS reactor CE$$\nu $$NS experiment
NUCLEUS is a cryogenic detection experiment which aims to measure <i>Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering</i> (CE <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi></mml:math> NS) and to search for new physics at the Chooz nuclear power plant in France. This article reports on the prediction of particle-induced backgrounds, especially focusing on the sub-keV energy range, which is a poorly known region where most of the CE <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi></mml:math> NS signal from reactor antineutrinos is expected. Together with measurements of the environmental background radiations at the experimental site, extensive Monte Carlo simulations based on the Geant4 package were run both to optimize the experimental setup for background reduction and to estimate the residual rates arising from different contributions such as cosmic ray-induced radiations, environmental gammas and material radioactivity. The NUCLEUS experimental setup is predicted to achieve a total rejection power of more than two orders of magnitude, leaving a residual background component which is strongly dominated by cosmic ray-induced neutrons. In the CE <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi></mml:math> NS signal region of interest between 10 and 100 eV, a total particle background rate of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mo>∼</mml:mo></mml:math> 250 d<sup>-1</sup> kg<sup>-1</sup> keV<sup>-1</sup> is expected in the CaWO<sub>4</sub> target detectors. This corresponds to a signal-to-background ratio <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mo>≳</mml:mo></mml:math> 1, and therefore meets the required specifications in terms of particle background rejection for the detection of reactor antineutrinos through CE <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi></mml:math> NS.
Authors
- E. Bossio (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9304-1829)
- M. Vignati (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8945-1128)
- T. Ortmann
- S. Fichtinger
- B. Mauri (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6833-2907)
- M. G. Boulay
- M. Kaznacheeva (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2712-1326)
- Mauro Cappelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4344-6067)
- A. Langenkämper
- S. Schönert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5276-2881)
- F. Buchsteiner
- H. Neyrial
- J. Burkhart (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1989-7845)
- A. Cruciani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2247-8067)
- G. del Castello (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7182-358X)
- L. Peters (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1649-8582)
- W. Potzel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1442-6833)
- C. Goupy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4954-5311)
- N. Casali (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3669-8247)
- G. Angloher
- E. Jericha (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8663-0526)
- A. Mazzolari
- G. Soum-Sidikov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1900-1794)
- M. Friedl (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7420-2559)
- Claudia Tomei
- David Lhuillier
- Richard Thalmeier
- Fabio Cappella
- N. Schermer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4213-5154)
- Julia Rothe
- R. Strauss
- F. Pröbst
- T. Lasserre
- R. Martin
- A. Bento
- M. Vivier
- B. Arnold
- F. Jeanneau
- H. Kluck
- L. Scola
- M. Giammei
- L. McCallin
- M. del Gallo Roccagiovine
- A. Erhart
- L. Oberauer
- D. Hauff
- H. Abele
- S. Dorer
- F. Reindl
- L. Stodolsky
- J. Schieck
- F. Pucci
- R. Cerulli
- V. M. Ghete
- M. Romagnoni
- M. Atzori Corona
- C. Nones
- A. Wex
- M. Mancuso
- C. Schwertner
Institutions
- University of Rome Tor Vergata (IT)
- TU Wien (AT)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (IT)
- Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (FR)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Max Planck Institute for Physics (DE)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Roma Tre (IT)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Ferrara (IT)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Roma Tor Vergata (IT)
- CEA Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Institute of High Energy Physics (AT)
- Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (DE)
- Technical University of Munich (DE)
- University of Coimbra (PT)
- Sapienza University of Rome (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The European Physical Journal C
- Published
- 2026-01-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-15168-9
- Primary Topic
- Neutrino Physics Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- European Commission
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche
- Austrian Science Fund
- Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics