Neutron-induced background in the CONUS experiment

Abstract CONUS is a novel experiment aiming at detecting elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering in the almost fully coherent regime using high-purity germanium (Ge) detectors and a reactor as antineutrino source. The detector setup is installed at the commercial nuclear power plant in Brokdorf, Germany, at a short distance to the reactor core to guarantee a high antineutrino flux. A good understanding of neutron-induced backgrounds is required, as the neutron recoil signals can mimic the predicted neutrino interactions. Especially events correlated with the reactor thermal power are troublesome. On-site measurements revealed such a correlated, highly thermalized neutron field with a maximum fluence rate of $$(745\pm 30)\,\hbox {cm}^{-2}\,\hbox {day}^{-1}$$ (745±30)cm-2day-1 . These neutrons, produced inside the reactor core, are reduced by a factor of $$\sim 10^{20}$$ ∼1020 on their way to the CONUS shield. With a high-purity Ge detector without shield the $$\gamma $$ γ -ray background was examined including thermal power correlated $$^{16}\hbox {N}$$ 16N decay products and neutron capture $$\gamma $$ γ -lines. Using the measured neutron spectrum as input, Monte Carlo simulations demonstrated that the thermal power correlated field is successfully mitigated by the CONUS shield. The reactor-induced background contribution in the region of interest is exceeded by the expected signal by at least one order of magnitude assuming a realistic ionization quenching factor.