Search for light mediators in the low-energy data of the CONNIE reactor neutrino experiment

Understand

The CONNIE experiment is located at a distance of 30 m from the core of a commercial nuclear reactor, and has collected a 3.7 kg-day exposure using a CCD detector array sensitive to an $\sim$1 keV threshold for the study of coherent neutrino-nucleus elastic scattering.

• Here we demonstrate the potential of this low-energy neutrino experiment as a probe for physics Beyond the Standard Model, by using the recently published results to constrain two simplified extensions of the Standard Model with light mediators.
• We compare the new limits with those obtained for the same models using neutrinos from the Spallation Neutron Source.
• Our new constraints represent the best limits for these simplified models among the experiments searching for CE$\nu$NS for a light vector mediator with mass $M_{Z^{\prime}}<$ 10 MeV, and for a light scalar mediator with mass $M_{\phi}<$ 30 MeV.