Dark matter experiment XENONnT measures solar neutrinos

Solar neutrinos

These neutrinos are produced by nuclear reactions in the sun. Neutrinos, like dark matter, hardly react with ordinary matter. Very occasionally they do show up, including by colliding with an atomic nucleus. The recoil of the atomic nucleus is visible and reveals that there was a neutrino.

Collide like billiard balls

The XENONnT collaboration has now seen solar neutrinos collide like billiard balls with atomic nuclei in their detector. Such a nuclear collision is exactly the kind
of signal that researchers hope to see from dark matter. That XENONnT can now measure this signal, albeit for neutrinos, is great confirmation that the detector is working well.

Nikhef is one of the partners in the XENONnT project and makes major contributions to both instrumentation and analysis.