Prospect of undoped inorganic scintillators at 77 Kelvin for the detection of non-standard neutrino interactions at the Spallation Neutron Source

Abstract

Investigated in this work are sensitivities to non-standard neutrino interactions (NSI) of a prototype detector placed about 20 meters away from the Spallation Neutron Source at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in two years of data taking. The presumed prototype consists of 10 kg undoped CsI scintillation crystals directly coupled with SiPM arrays operated at 77 K. Compared to the COHERENT CsI(Na) detector, a much higher light yield is assumed for the prototype. An experiment with a cylindrical undoped CsI crystal coupled directly to a photomultiplier tube at about 77 K was conducted to verify the light yield assumption. A yield of $33.5 \pm 0.7$ photoelectrons per keV electron-equivalent (PE/keVee) was achieved in [13, 60] keVee, which is much closer to the relevant energy region for the NSI search than some of the early studies.