Reactor neutrino applications and coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering

Potential applications of neutrino detection to nuclear security have been discussed since the 1970s. Recent years have seen great progress in detector technologies based on inverse beta decay, with the demonstration of ton-scale surface-level detectors capable of high quality neutrino spectrum measurements. In 2017, coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering was experimentally confirmed with neutrinos from stopped pion decay, and there are a number of experiments aimed at seeing this process with reactor neutrinos. The large cross section and thresholdless nature of this reaction make it plausible to consider it for applications to nuclear security. Here we present a first direct comparison of the two reaction modes.