CONUS experiment

The CONUS (COherent Neutrino nUcleus Scattering) experiment is a research project at the commercial nuclear power plant in Brokdorf, Germany (see Figure 1).

The CONUS project is searching for the fundamental process of coherent elastic scattering of neutrinos off atomic nuclei.

The primary goal is to confirm the existence of this process and to use this interaction type to investigate further neutrino properties within and beyond the standard model of elementary particle physics.

Due to this fact, neutrino detectors are generally very large and filled with several (kilo)tons of target material.

[1] However, at low energies up to a maximum of a few tens of mega-electronvolt (MeV), neutrinos can interact coherently with the nucleus as a whole (see Figure 2).

To detect coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering, CONUS is collecting reactor-on and reactor-off data.

By comparing these data, an excess of events in the expected energy window during reactor-on time can reveal the existence of CEνNS.

This limit constitutes valuable information for basic neutrino research, since it allows one to test predictions for the strength of CEνNS in the standard model theory or in variations of it.

The unique performance of the CONUS detectors with their very low energy thresholds, ultra-low background levels and long-term stability is highlighted in Ref.

It is generally expected that the coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering process plays a significant role in the dynamics of Core-Collapse Supernovae.

Figure 1: Outside view of the nuclear power plant in Brokdorf
Figure 2: Representation of the coherent elastic neutrino scattering off an atomic nucleus via the exchange of a neutral Z-boson
Figure 3: Energy-dependent cross section of coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering versus the cross sections of neutrino-proton scattering, of the inverse beta decay and of the neutrino-electron scattering
Figure 5: Photo showing the opened CONUS shield and the 4 Germanium detectors