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Abstract:

The $\mathrm{SNO}+$ Collaboration reports the first evidence of ${}^8\mathrm{B}$ solar neutrinos interacting on ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$ nuclei. The charged current interaction proceeds through ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}+{\mathrm{ν}}_e{→}^{13}\mathrm{N}+e^{−}$ which is followed, with a 10 minute half life, by ${}^{13}\mathrm{N}{→}^{13}\mathrm{C}+e^{+}+{\mathrm{ν}}_e$ . The detection strategy is based on the delayed coincidence between the electron and the positron. Evidence for the charged current signal is presented with a significance of $4.2\mathrm{σ}$ . Using the natural abundance of ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$ present in the scintillator, 5.7 metric tons of ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$ over 231 days of data were used in this analysis. The ${5.6}_{−2.3}^{+3.0}$ observed events in the data set are consistent with the expectation of ${4.7}_{−1.3}^{+0.6}$ events. This result is the second real-time measurement of CC interactions of ${}^8\mathrm{B}$ neutrinos with nuclei and constitutes the lowest energy observation of neutrino interactions on ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$ generally. This enables the first direct measurement of the CC ${\mathrm{ν}}_e$ reaction to the ground state of ${}^{13}\mathrm{N}$ , yielding an average cross section of $({16.1}_{−6.7}^{+8.5}(\mathrm{stat}\mathrm{.}{)}_{−2.7}^{+1.6}(\mathrm{syst}\mathrm{.}))×{10}^{−43}{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ over the relevant ${}^8\mathrm{B}$ solar neutrino energies.

Abstract:

We measure the amplitude of matter fluctuations over a wide range of redshifts by combining CMB lensing observations from ACT DR6 and Planck PR4 with the overdensity of quasars from Quaia, a Gaia and unWISE quasar catalog. Our analysis includes the CMB lensing power spectrum from ACT DR6, the auto-correlation of two Quaia quasar samples centered at z ≃ 1.0 and z ≃ 2.1, and their cross-correlations with CMB lensing from both ACT DR6 and Planck PR4. By performing a series of contamination and systematic null tests, we find no evidence for contamination in the lensing maps, contrary to what was suggested in previous Quaia cross-correlation analyses using Planck PR4 CMB lensing data. From the joint analysis of the quasar auto- and cross-correlations with CMB lensing, and including BOSS BAO data to break the degeneracy between Ω m and σ 8, we obtain σ 8 = 0.802+0.045 -0.057, consistent with ΛCDM predictions from Planck primary CMB measurements. We also find consistent results using DESI BAO data. Combining the CMB lensing auto-spectrum with the cross-correlation measurement improves the constraint on σ 8 by 12% relative to the lensing auto-spectrum alone, yielding σ 8 = 0.804 ± 0.013. This dataset combination also enables a reconstruction of structure growth across redshifts. We infer a 12% constraint on the amplitude of matter fluctuations at z > 3, with a measurement at the median redshift of the signal of σ 8(z̃ = 5.1) = 0.146+0.021 -0.014, consistent with Planck at the 1.4σ level. These results provide one of the highest redshift constraints on the growth of structure to date.