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    Sensitivity of nEXO to Xe136 charged-current interactions: Background-free searches for solar neutrinos and fermionic dark matter

    G. Richardson1,2, B. G. Lenardo1, M. Yu1, D. Gallacher3, R. Saldanha4, P. Acharya5, S. Al Kharusi6, A. Amy7,8, E. Angelico6 et al. (nEXO Collaboration)

    E. Angelico6, A. Anker1, I. J. Arnquist4, A. Atencio9, J. Bane8, V. Belov10, E. P. Bernard11, T. Bhatta12, A. Bolotnikov13, J. Breslin14, P. A. Breur1, J. P. Brodsky11, S. Bron15, E. Brown14, T. Brunner3,15, B. Burnell9, E. Caden16,17,3, G. F. Cao18,*, L. Q. Cao19, D. Cesmecioglu8, D. Chernyak5,†, M. Chiu13, R. Collister20, T. Daniels21, L. Darroch2, R. DeVoe6, M. L. di Vacri4, M. J. Dolinski9, B. Eckert9, M. Elbeltagi20, A. Emara22, N. Fatemighomi16, W. Fairbank23, B. T. Foust4, N. Gallice13, G. Giacomini13, W. Gillis8,‡, A. Gorham4, R. Gornea20, K. Gracequist20, G. Gratta6, C. A. Hardy6, S. C. Hedges11,§, M. Heffner11, E. Hein24, J. D. Holt15, A. Iverson23, P. Kachru8,∥, A. Karelin10, D. Keblbeck25, I. Kotov13, A. Kuchenkov10, K. S. Kumar8, A. Larson26, M. B. Latif9,¶, S. Lavoie3, K. G. Leach25,**, A. Lennarz27,15, D. S. Leonard28, K. K. H. Leung29, H. Lewis15, G. Li18, X. Li15, Z. Li30, C. Licciardi22, R. Lindsay31, R. MacLellan12, S. Majidi3, C. Malbrunot15,3,32, M. Marquis15,27, J. Masbou7, M. Medina-Peregrina33, S. Mngonyama31, B. Mong1, D. C. Moore2, X. E. Ngwadla31, K. Ni33, A. Nolan8, S. C. Nowicki3,††, J. C. Nzobadila Ondze31, A. Odian1, J. L. Orrell4, G. S. Ortega4, L. Pagani4, H. Peltz Smalley8, A. Peña Perez1, A. Piepke5, A. Pocar8, V. Radeka13, R. Rai3, H. Rasiwala3, D. Ray3,15, S. Rescia13, F. Retière15, V. Riot11, N. Rocco4, R. Ross3, P. C. Rowson1, S. Sangiorgio11, S. Sekula34,16, T. Shetty22, L. Si6, J. Soderstrom23, F. Spadoni4, V. Stekhanov10, X. L. Sun18, S. Thibado8, T. Totev3, S. Triambak31, R. H. M. Tsang5,‡‡, O. A. Tyuka31, T. Vallivilayil John20, E. van Bruggen8, M. Vidal6, S. Viel20, J. Vuilleumier35, M. Walent17, H. Wang18, Q. D. Wang19, M. P. Watts2, W. Wei18, M. Wehrfritz24, L. J. Wen18, U. Wichoski17,20, S. Wilde2, M. Worcester13, X. M. Wu19, H. Xu33, H. B. Yang19, L. Yang33, and O. Zeldovich10 (nEXO Collaboration)

    • 1SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA
    • 2Wright Laboratory, Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA
    • 3Physics Department, McGill University, Montréal, Québec H3A 2T8, Canada
    • 4Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington 99352, USA
    • 5Department of Phfysics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35405, USA
    • 6Physics Department, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
    • 7SUBATECH, Nantes Université, IMT Atlantique, CNRS/IN2P3, Nantes 44307, France
    • 8Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions and Physics Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA
    • 9Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
    • 10National Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow, 123182, Russia
    • 11Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, USA
    • 12Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506, USA
    • 13Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA
    • 14Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, USA
    • 15TRIUMF, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 2A3, Canada
    • 16SNOLAB, Lively, Ontario P3Y 1N2, Canada
    • 17School of Natural Sciences, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario P3E 2C6, Canada
    • 18Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
    • 19Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China
    • 20Department of Physics, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada
    • 21Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina 28403, USA
    • 22Department of Physics, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada
    • 23Physics Department, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA
    • 24Skyline College, San Bruno, California 94066, USA
    • 25Department of Physics, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA
    • 26Department of Physics, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota 57069, USA
    • 27Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4M1, Canada
    • 28IBS Center for Underground Physics, Daejeon, 34126, South Korea
    • 29Department of Physics and Astronomy, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey 07043, USA
    • 30Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA
    • 31Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of the Western Cape, P/B X17 Bellville 7535, South Africa
    • 32Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada
    • 33Physics Department, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
    • 34Department of Physics, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada
    • 35LHEP, Albert Einstein Center, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland

    • *Also at: University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
    • †Now at: Research Center for Neutrino Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8578, Japan.
    • ‡Now at: Bates College, Lewiston, Maine 04240, USA.
    • §Now at: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA.
    • ∥Now at: Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Trento, Italy.
    • Also at: Center for Energy Research and Development, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 220005 Nigeria.
    • **Also at: Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA.
    • ††Now at: University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 2R3, Canada.
    • ‡‡Now at: Canon Medical Research USA, Inc.

    Phys. Rev. D 112, 103010 – Published 6 November, 2025

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/6h4p-nk1y

    Abstract

    We study the sensitivity of nEXO to solar neutrino charged-current interactions, νe+Xe136→Cs136*+e−, as well as analogous interactions predicted by models of fermionic dark matter. Due to the recently observed low-lying isomeric states of Cs136, these interactions will create a time-delayed coincident signal observable in the scintillation channel. Here we develop a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of scintillation emission, propagation, and detection in the nEXO detector to model these signals under different assumptions about the timing resolution of the photosensor readout. We show this correlated signal can be used to achieve background discrimination on the order of 10−9, enabling nEXO to make background-free measurements of solar neutrinos above the reaction threshold of 0.668 MeV. We project that nEXO could measure the flux of neutrinos from the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle with a statistical uncertainty of 25%, thus contributing a novel and competitive measurement toward addressing the solar metallicity problem. Additionally, nEXO could measure the mean energy of the Be7 neutrinos with a precision of σ≤1.5  keV and could determine the survival probability of Be7 and pep solar νe with precision comparable to the state of the art. These quantities are sensitive to the Sun’s core temperature and to nonstandard neutrino interactions, respectively. Furthermore, the strong background suppression would allow nEXO to search for charged-current interactions of fermionic dark matter in the mass range mχ=0.668–7  MeV with a sensitivity up to three orders of magnitude better than current limits.

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