Delayed coincidence in electron-neutrino capture on gallium for neutrino spectroscopy

Abstract

This work explains a delayed-coincidence method to perform MeV-scale neutrino spectroscopy with electron-neutrino capture on gallium. An electron-neutrino possessing energy greater than 407.6 keV can be captured on gallium and produce a daughter germanium nucleus at its first excited state with a mean lifetime of 114 ns. The released electron and gammas before the first excited state of Ge can generate a prompt signal representing the solar neutrino energy and the gamma from the deexcitation of the first excited state, 175 keV, can give a delayed signal. The cross-section of this electron-neutrino capture process is evaluated and is comparable with electron-neutrino capture on chlorine. A possible implementation with a liquid scintillator is discussed to exploit the delayed coincidence. The detection scheme is more feasible than using 115In, etc, but need a larger target. The proposed method can be helpful for the MeV-scale solar neutrino spectroscopy and for solving the gallium anomaly.