Séminaires interne du DPhP: Advancing Neutrino Detection with Cryogenic Calorimeters: NUCLEUS at Chooz and CRAB

par Elisabetta Bossio (CEA - Paris Saclay)

mercredi 10 juin 2026, 11:00 → 12:30 Europe/Paris

CEA Paris-Saclay

Cryogenic detectors are opening new opportunities for neutrino physics and rare-event searches thanks to their exceptionally low energy thresholds. In this seminar, I will present recent progress in two complementary efforts: the NUCLEUS and CRAB experiments.

The NUCLEUS experiment aims to detection of 100 eV nuclear recoils induced by coherent elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering using CaWO4 gram-scale cryogenic calorimeters. Following a successful commissioning campaign at TUM in summer 2024, the experiment is currently being installed and commissioned at the Chooz nuclear power plant in France, where it will be exposed to an intense reactor neutrino flux. I will discuss the current status of this commissioning phase, including the main challenges and first performance results, and present the expected physics reach for the upcoming data-taking phases. 

In parallel, the CRAB experiment uses neutron capture to study the nuclear recoil response of cryogenic detectors with high precision, a key ingredient for the interpretation of CEνNS measurements and dark-matter searches. I will present our latest results obtained with CaWO₄ and Al₂O₃ detectors. In addition to determining the nuclear energy scale with %-level accuracy in the few 100 eV energy range, I will discuss a systematic comparison with the electronic recoil response. 

zoom connection: https://cern.zoom.us/j/67425097284