PoS - Proceedings of Science
Volume 441 - XVIII International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP2023) - Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics
Search for neutron invisible decay modes in JUNO
C. Jiang*  on behalf of the JUNO collaboration
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: February 28, 2024
Published on: March 22, 2024
Abstract
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kton multipurpose underground
liquid scintillator (LS) detector currently under construction in southern China. One of the
capabilities of JUNO detector is to search for the baryon number violation processes, which would
be a crucial step towards testing the Grand Unified Theories and explaining the matter-antimatter
asymmetry of the Universe. The nucleon decay provides a direct observation of baryon number
violation and has been the focus of many experiments over the past several decades. The large
LS detector of JUNO has a distinct advantage in detecting nucleon decay. The JUNO LS target
consists of about 88% C (99% 12C) and 12% 1H. The invisible decays of neutrons from the s-shell
in 12C will result in a highly excited residual nucleus. It has been found that some de-excitation
modes of the excited nucleus can produce time- and space-correlated triple signals. This talk
reports the JUNO potential to search for invisible decay modes of the neutron. Based on MC
simulations, we made comprehensive estimates for all possible backgrounds, including accidental
triple coincidences from inverse beta decays, natural radioactivities and cosmogenic isotopes. The
correlated backgrounds from atmospheric neutrino neutral current events have also been evaluated.
We adopt the Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD) and Multi-Variate-Analysis (MVA) techniques
for suppressing backgrounds. A preliminary result to neutron invisible decays in JUNO will be
presented.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.441.0185
How to cite

Metadata are provided both in "article" format (very similar to INSPIRE) as this helps creating very compact bibliographies which can be beneficial to authors and readers, and in "proceeding" format which is more detailed and complete.

Open Access
Creative Commons LicenseCopyright owned by the author(s) under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.