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Abstract

The CONUS experiment, using four 1 kg-sized point-contact high-purity germanium detectors
(HPGe), aims to detect coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEνNS) in the
fully coherent regime. It is located close to the reactor core of the nuclear power plant in
Brokdorf, Germany. For the success of the experiment excellent background suppression
is crucial. A new opportunity for further background reduction is the analysis of the pulse
shape of each event. Depending on whether the incoming particle interacts in the fully
depleted bulk region or in an outer layer of the Ge diode, the resulting pulse shapes are
different. In this thesis, a technique will be presented to discriminate the different low
energy interactions based on a rise time fit of their pulses. It will be shown that the
rise time fit analysis can be used down to energies of ∼ 200 eV and that an additional
background reduction of about 25 % in the region of interest for CEνNS is achievable. For
this purpose, a new method will be presented to calculate the efficiencies of a pulse shape
cut, including systematic uncertainties. The universality of the rise time fit is shown by
demonstrating the feasibility of discriminating multi-site events at high energies.