Studies of Neutrino-Nucleus Elastic Scattering with Point-Contact Germanium Detectors at the Kuo-Sheng Reactor Neutrino Laboratory

Abstract

The low energy and intense flux of electron anti-neutrinos from nuclear reactors provide the perfect stage to study elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering ($\nu A_{el}$) in the fully coherent regime. We report results from the TEXONO experiment using electro-cooled $p$-type point-contact Germanium detectors with masses of 523~g and 1434~g at the Kuo-Sheng Reactor Neutrino Laboratory. We report improved constraints on the $\nu A_{el}$ cross section with a combined exposure of 404(813.7)~kg-days of Reactor ON(OFF) data at an electron-equivalent threshold of 200~eV$_{ee}$. The Lindhard model, in which the quenching factor is parameterized by a single parameter k, is adopted to describe the suppression of ionization yield. At the benchmark value of k=0.162, a limit of $\rho<$2.0 at 90\% confidence level (CL) is derived, where $\rho$ represents the ratio of the observed to the predicted Standard Model cross section. Moreover the region k$>$0.205 is excluded at 90\% CL using the SM-predicted $\nu A_{el}$ rate. A bound on the neutrino magnetic moment from $\nu A_{el}$ at $\mu_{\nu} {<} 5.9 \times 10^{-10}~\mu_B$ at 90\% CL is also derived.