JUNO sensitivity to low energy atmospheric neutrino spectra

Abstract

Atmospheric neutrinos are one of the most relevant natural neutrino sources that can be exploited to
infer properties about cosmic rays and neutrino oscillations.
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO)
experiment, a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector with excellent energy resolution is currently under construction in
China. JUNO will be able to detect several atmospheric
neutrinos per day given the large volume. A study on the
JUNO detection and reconstruction capabilities of atmospheric ?e and ?? fluxes is presented in this paper. In this
study, a sample of atmospheric neutrino Monte Carlo events
has been generated, starting from theoretical models, and
then processed by the detector simulation. The excellent timing resolution of the 3” PMT light detection system of JUNO
detector and the much higher light yield for scintillation over
Cherenkov allow to measure the time structure of the scintillation light with very high precision. Since ?e and ?? interactions produce a slightly different light pattern, the different time evolution of light allows to discriminate the flavor
of primary neutrinos. A probabilistic unfolding method has
been used, in order to infer the primary neutrino energy spectrum from the detector experimental observables. The simulated spectrum has been reconstructed between 100 MeV
and 10 GeV, showing a great potential of the detector in the
atmospheric low energy region