Cryogenic pure CsI as a probe for neutrino electromagnetic interactions
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866908991018237952 |
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| author | Lewis, C. M. |
| author_facet | Lewis, C. M. |
| contents | Searches for neutrino electromagnetic interactions at reactor sites require an unusual combination of ultra-low thresholds and a stable low-background environment. It is shown here that cryogenic undoped cesium iodide (CsI) naturally satisfies these conditions in a way prior detectors have not. Although suppression of nuclear recoil ionization efficiency at low energies limits the use of this scintillator for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, that same property renders the detector effectively blind to those nuclear recoils from MeV-scale reactor antineutrinos. This leaves the low-energy regime free to expose neutrino-electron ($\barν_{e} -e^{-}$) scattering as the dominant observable channel and converts cryogenic CsI into a targeted probe of electromagnetic couplings. This work presents a conceptual design based on pure CsI crystals immersed in an active xenon-doped liquid argon veto evaluated under realistic intrinsic and environmental backgrounds. Under present detector capabilities, order-of-magnitude improvements over current reactor limits on the neutrino magnetic moment and millicharge are achievable. Cryogenic pure CsI therefore offers a distinctive and scalable route to leading studies of $\barν_{e} -e^{-}$ physics. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_22485 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Cryogenic pure CsI as a probe for neutrino electromagnetic interactions Lewis, C. M. High Energy Physics - Experiment Instrumentation and Detectors Searches for neutrino electromagnetic interactions at reactor sites require an unusual combination of ultra-low thresholds and a stable low-background environment. It is shown here that cryogenic undoped cesium iodide (CsI) naturally satisfies these conditions in a way prior detectors have not. Although suppression of nuclear recoil ionization efficiency at low energies limits the use of this scintillator for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, that same property renders the detector effectively blind to those nuclear recoils from MeV-scale reactor antineutrinos. This leaves the low-energy regime free to expose neutrino-electron ($\barν_{e} -e^{-}$) scattering as the dominant observable channel and converts cryogenic CsI into a targeted probe of electromagnetic couplings. This work presents a conceptual design based on pure CsI crystals immersed in an active xenon-doped liquid argon veto evaluated under realistic intrinsic and environmental backgrounds. Under present detector capabilities, order-of-magnitude improvements over current reactor limits on the neutrino magnetic moment and millicharge are achievable. Cryogenic pure CsI therefore offers a distinctive and scalable route to leading studies of $\barν_{e} -e^{-}$ physics. |
| title | Cryogenic pure CsI as a probe for neutrino electromagnetic interactions |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Experiment Instrumentation and Detectors |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.22485 |