Michael Wurm (Mainz) - JUNO’s First Light: High-Precision Reactor Neutrino Oscillations and prospects for Diffuse Supernova Neutrinos
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Europe/Stockholm
10238, Beurlingrummet
Description
The JUNO experiment in southern China is designed for a high-precision measurement of reactor antineutrino oscillations. With a 20-kiloton liquid scintillator target and 17,600 20-inch photomultiplier tubes, JUNO is the largest detector of its kind and is expected to achieve an exceptional energy resolution of 3% at 1 MeV. Located 55 km from the Taishan and Yangjiang nuclear power plants, JUNO is located at the first solar oscillation maximum, enabling precise measurements of the oscillation pattern and sensitivity to the neutrino mass ordering. This configuration also provides outstanding sensitivity to the solar oscillation angle and mass splitting.
JUNO began operations in August 2025. Following a brief calibration phase, 59 days of stable data-taking were analyzed to deliver the first oscillation results, improving the uncertainties on the solar oscillation parameters by a factor of 1.6 relative to the combination of all previous measurements.
What is more, JUNO will be a new observatory for astrophysical neutrinos, particularly for the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background, a faint cosmic flux of neutrinos from past core-collapses yet to be discovered. The talk will explore JUNO’s sensitivity, leveraging the detector's unprecedented size and background discrimination capabilities.
