Breakthrough Tracker record

Direct observation of coherent elastic antineutrino–nucleus scattering

CONUS+ inferred 395 ± 106 reactor-antineutrino signal events, consistent with the Standard Model expectation of 347 ± 59. The reported significance was 3.7σ.

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Stable ID
reactor-antineutrino-cevns-2025
Revision
reactor-antineutrino-cevns-2025.v1
Field
Physics · Neutrino and nuclear physics
Evidence
Tier 1 · Peer reviewed: Yes
Record state
Current · Peer-reviewed observation with statistical-strength caveat
Last checked

AI role

No AI assistance was disclosed in the paper or linked reporting.

Record details

Problem or result
Detecting coherent elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering with low-energy reactor antineutrinos
Authors
N. Ackermann, H. Bonet, A. Bonhomme, C. Buck and the CONUS Collaboration
Institutions
Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and the Brokdorf and Leibstadt nuclear plants
Result date
Preprint April 1, 2025; published July 30, 2025

Why it matters

Reactor CEνNS enables compact neutrino detectors and a clean low-energy test of the Standard Model.

Limits

CEνNS was first observed by COHERENT in 2017 with higher-energy accelerator neutrinos; the novelty is the reactor-antineutrino signal in the fully coherent regime. Its 3.7σ strength is below the conventional 5σ particle-physics discovery threshold.

Sources

  1. Primary: CONUS+ paper in Nature
  2. Independent: Max Planck Institute technical explanation

Correction and revision history

  1. Initial entry.

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