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Abstract

Intense fluxes of reactor antineutrinos offer a unique possibility to probe
the fully coherent character of elastic neutrino scattering off atomic nuclei.
In this regard, detectors face the challenge to register tiny recoil energies
of a few keV at the maximum. The CONUS experiment was installed in 17.1 m
distance from the reactor core of the nuclear power plant in Brokdorf, Germany,
and was designed to detect this neutrino interaction channel by using four 1
kg-sized point contact germanium detectors with sub-keV energy thresholds. This
report describes the unique specifications addressed to the design, the
research and development, and the final production of these detectors. It
demonstrates their excellent electronic performance obtained during
commissioning under laboratory conditions as well as during the first two years
of operation at the reactor site which started on April 1, 2018. It highlights
the long-term stability of different detector parameters and the achieved
background levels of the germanium detectors inside the CONUS shield setup.