First Indication of Solar8BNeutrinos through Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering in PandaX-4T

Abstract

The PandaX-4T liquid xenon detector at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory is used to measure the solar 8B neutrino flux by detecting neutrinos through coherent scattering with xenon nuclei. Data samples requiring the coincidence of scintillation and ionization signals (paired), as well as unpaired ionization-only signals (US2), are selected with energy threshold of approximately 1.1 keV (0.33 keV) nuclear recoil energy. Combining the commissioning run and the first science run of PandaX-4T, a total exposure of 1.20 and 1.04  tonne·year are collected for the paired and US2, respectively. After unblinding, 3 and 332 events are observed with an expectation of 2.8±0.5 and 251±32 background events, for the paired and US2 data, respectively. A combined analysis yields a best-fit 8B neutrino signal of 3.5 (75) events from the paired (US2) data sample, with ∼37% uncertainty, and the background-only hypothesis is disfavored at 2.64⁢𝜎 significance. This gives a solar 8B neutrino flux of (8.4±3.1)×106  cm−2 s−1, consistent with the standard solar model prediction. It is also the first indication of solar 8B neutrino “fog” in a dark matter direct detection experiment.