Abstract: | We present the detection potential for the diffuse supernova neutrino
background (DSNB) at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO),
using the inverse-beta-decay (IBD) detection channel on free protons. We employ
the latest information on the DSNB flux predictions, and investigate in detail
the background and its reduction for the DSNB search at JUNO. The atmospheric
neutrino induced neutral current (NC) background turns out to be the most
critical background, whose uncertainty is carefully evaluated from both the
spread of model predictions and an envisaged extit{in situ} measurement. We
also make a careful study on the background suppression with the pulse shape
discrimination (PSD) and triple coincidence (TC) cuts. With latest DSNB signal
predictions, more realistic background evaluation and PSD efficiency
optimization, and additional TC cut, JUNO can reach the significance of
3$sigma$ for 3 years of data taking, and achieve better than 5$sigma$ after
10 years for a reference DSNB model. In the pessimistic scenario of
non-observation, JUNO would strongly improve the limits and exclude a
significant region of the model parameter space. |