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This paper reports results from a search for nucleon decay through invisible modes, where no visible energy is directly deposited during the decay itself, during the initial water phase of SNOþ. However, such decays within the oxygen nucleus would produce an excited daughter that would subsequently deexcite, often emitting detectable gamma rays. A search for such gamma rays yields limits of 2.5 × 10 29 y at 90% Bayesian credibility level (with a prior uniform in rate) for the partial lifetime of the neutron, and 3.6 × 10 29 y for the partial lifetime of the proton, the latter a 70% improvement on the previous limit from SNO. We also present partial lifetime limits for invisible dinucleon modes of 1.3 × 10 28 y for nn, 2.6 × 10 28 y for pn and 4.7 × 10 28 y for pp, an improvement over existing limits by close to 3 orders of magnitude for the latter two.
A measurement of the 8 B solar neutrino flux has been made using a 69.2 kt-day dataset acquired with the SNOþ detector during its water commissioning phase. At energies above 6 MeV the dataset is an extremely pure sample of solar neutrino elastic scattering events, owing primarily to the detector's deep location, allowing an accurate measurement with relatively little exposure. In that energy region the best fit background rate is 0.25 þ0.09 −0.07 events=kt-day, significantly lower than the measured solar neutrino event rate in that energy range, which is 1.03 þ0.13 −0.12 events=kt-day. Also using data below this threshold, down to 5 MeV, fits of the solar neutrino event direction yielded an observed flux of 2.53 þ0.31 −0.28 ðstatÞ þ0.13 −0.10 ðsystÞ × 10 6 cm −2 s −1 , assuming no neutrino oscillations. This rate is consistent with matter enhanced neutrino oscillations and measurements from other experiments.
A liquid scintillator consisting of linear alkylbenzene as the solvent and 2,5-diphenyloxazole as the fluor was developed for the SNO+ experiment. This mixture was chosen as it is compatible with acrylic and has a competitive light yield to pre-existing liquid scintillators while conferring other advantages including longer attenuation lengths, superior safety characteristics, chemical simplicity, ease of handling, and logistical availability. Its properties have been extensively characterized and are presented here. This liquid scintillator is now used in several neutrino physics experiments in addition to SNO+.
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