CNNs for enhanced background discrimination in DSNB searches in large-scale water-Gd detectors

Understand

Gadolinium-loading of large water Cherenkov detectors is a prime method for the detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB).

• While the enhanced neutron tagging capability greatly reduces single-event backgrounds, correlated events mimicking the IBD coincidence signature remain a potentially harmful background.
• Neutral-Current (NC) interactions of atmospheric neutrinos potentially dominate the DSNB signal especially in the low-energy range of the observation window that reaches from about 12 to 30 MeV.
• The present paper investigates a novel method for the discrimination of this background.