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arXiv · 2608.28095

Characterizing Single-Signal Events from Atmospheric-Neutrino Neutral-Current Interactions in Large Liquid Scintillator Detectors

Zhenning Qu·Jie Cheng·Wan-lei Guo·Gaosong Li·Yu-Feng Li·Liang-jian Wen
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Abstract

Neutral-current interactions of atmospheric neutrinos in large liquid scintillator detectors offer a new opportunity to study single-signal events (hereafter singles), characterized by a prompt energy deposition on the MeV-to-GeV scale and no identified delayed signal. In this work, we systematically investigate the model dependence of atmospheric-neutrino singles due to the primary neutrino-nucleus interaction, residual-nucleus de-excitation, and secondary interactions in the scintillator. Our results show that the dominant model dependence originates from the primary neutrino-nucleus interaction, especially for neutral-current processes on carbon, whereas de-excitation is essential for the singles selection yet leads to relatively small spectral variations among realistic models. Secondary-interaction effects are also subdominant overall. We further present the predicted event rates and prompt-energy spectra for neutral-current singles, along with the charged-current contribution. Separately, we estimate the low-energy contribution from elastic scattering of sub-\SI{100}{\MeV} atmospheric neutrinos on free protons. These results highlight the physics potential of current and future large liquid scintillator detectors, such as the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, to study atmospheric-neutrino singles, probe neutrino-nucleus interaction models, and improve background estimates for rare-event searches.

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Zhenning Qu, Jie Cheng, Wan-lei Guo, Gaosong Li, Yu-Feng Li, Liang-jian Wen. 2026-08-28. Characterizing Single-Signal Events from Atmospheric-Neutrino Neutral-Current Interactions in Large Liquid Scintillator Detectors. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28095

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