Journal Article

Deployment and performance of a Low-Energy-Threshold Skipper-CCD inside a nuclear reactor

Cababié, M., Depaoli, E., Sidelnik, I., Tiffenberg, J., Botti, A., Perez, S., Rodrigues, D., Moroni, G. Fernández, Bellino, P., Delgado, D., Estrada, J., Chierchie, F.

2024

Overview

A bstract Charge Coupled Devices (CCD) are being used for reactor neutrino experiments and have already demonstrated their potential in constraining new physics models. The prospect of a Skipper-CCD experiment looking for standard and beyond standard model (BSM) physics in a nuclear reactor has been evaluated for different benchmark scenarios. Here, we report the first installation of a 2-g Skipper-CCD inside the containment building of a 2 GW th nuclear power plant and analyze its performance throughout its first 18 months of operation. The sensor was successfully deployed at Atucha II, in Argentina, 12 meters away from the center of the reactor core. We discuss the challenges involved in the commissioning of the detector and present data acquired during reactor ON and reactor OFF periods, with the sensor functioning with a sub-electron readout noise of 0.17 e − . Based on an exposure of 56.8 g day reactor ON and two reactor OFF data sets with a total exposure of 118.1 g day we characterize the system and evaluate the sensitivity to CEvNS. We achieved a background rate of 33 kdru and a low threshold of 45 eV ee . The ongoing efforts to improve sensitivities to CEvNS and BSM interaction are also discussed.

• Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg,Springer Nature B.V,Springer Nature,SpringerOpen
• Subject: Background noise / Beyond Standard Model / Charge coupled devices / Classical and Quantum Gravitation / Containment vessels / Data acquisition / Electroweak Interaction / Elementary Particles / INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY / Neutrino Detectors and Telescopes (experiments) / Neutrinos / Nuclear power plants / Nuclear reactor containment / Nuclear reactors / Physics / Physics and Astronomy / PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS / Quantum Field Theories / Quantum Field Theory / Quantum Physics / Reactor cores / Regular Article - Experimental Physics / Relativity Theory / Sensitivity analysis / Standard model (particle physics) / String Theory