Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2011 Fall Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics
Volume 56, Number 12
Wednesday–Saturday, October 26–29, 2011; East Lansing, Michigan
Session CC: Neutrinos I |
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Chair: Nikolai Tolich, University of Washington Room: 101 |
Thursday, October 27, 2011 8:30AM - 8:42AM |
CC.00001: Inclusive neutrino cross section measurements at MINERvA Jasmine Ratchford The MINERvA experiment is a precision neutrino experiment designed to improve our understanding of the neutrino-nucleus interaction. The experiment uses a fully active scintillation detector to allow full event reconstruction and includes passive targets helium, water, carbon, iron and lead. Preliminary measurements of inclusive cross section ratios of lead to iron will be shown. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 27, 2011 8:42AM - 8:54AM |
CC.00002: Quasi-Elastic Neutrino Cross Sections with MINERvA Joe Walding The MINERvA experiment will measure neutrino and antineutrino quasi-elastic scattering on helium, water, carbon, iron, and lead for neutrinos in the few GeV range. We will present preliminary results for quasi-elastic cross sections in the few GeV range on carbon. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 27, 2011 8:54AM - 9:06AM |
CC.00003: Neutrino-nucleus coherent scattering as a probe of neutron density distributions Kelly Patton, Jon Engel, Gail McLaughlin Neutrino-nucleus coherent elastic scattering provides a theoretically appealing way to measure the neutron part of the associated form factor. We show, using an expansion of the form factor into moments, that neutrinos from stopped muons can probe not only the second moment of the form factor (the neutron radius) but also the fourth moment. Using simple Monte Carlo techniques for Argon, Germanium, and Xenon detectors of 25 tonnes, 10 tonnes, and 3 tonnes, respectively, we show that the neutron radii could be found with an uncertainty of a few percent. If the luminosity of the neutrino flux is known independently, it is possible to discriminate between the predictions of various Skyme models as well. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:06AM - 9:18AM |
CC.00004: SciNOvA: A measurement of neutrino-nucleus scattering in a narrow-band beam Rex Tayloe SciNOvA is a proposed project to deploy a fine-grained scintillator detector in front of the NOvA near detector to collect neutrino-nucleus scattering events in the NUMI, off-axis, narrow-band neutrino beam at Fermilab. This detector can make unique contributions to the measurement of charged- and neutral-current quasi-elastic scattering as well as neutral-current $\pi^0$ and photon production. These processes are important to understand for fundamental physics and as backgrounds to measurements of electron neutrino appearance oscillations. The talk will present the strategy and science case of the SciNOvA experiment. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:18AM - 9:30AM |
CC.00005: Status of the SNO+ experiment Jarek Kaspar SNO+ is a large liquid scintillator detector following the successful SNO experiment with liquid scintillator replacing the heavy water. Located 2 km underground in Vale nickel mine in Sudbury, Canada, the experiment will detect solar neutrinos including the pep and CNO neutrinos, neutrinos from Earth, reactors, and supernovae. In addition, the experiment will search for neutrino-less double beta decay by adding 150-Nd to the scintillator. I will present the status of the experiment. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:30AM - 9:42AM |
CC.00006: Measurement of light yield dependence on electron energy for SNO+ scintillator Hok Seum Wan Chan Tseung SNO+ is a multi-purpose neutrino experiment whose reach extends to the following areas of neutrino physics: neutrinoless double beta decay (with Nd-loaded scintillator), geo-neutrinos, reactor and low-energy solar neutrinos, as well as supernova neutrinos. It is a $\sim$780-tonne liquid scintillator detector currently under construction at the SNOLAB facility in Sudbury, Ontario,Canada. The scintillator to be used in SNO+ is linear alkylbenzene (LAB) with $\sim$2 g/L of PPO (2,5-diphenyloxazole). In this talk, we describe an experiment to test the linearity of the response of LAB-PPO with respect to electrons. We find that below $\sim$0.4 MeV, the energy scale of LAB-PPO becomes non-linear. An explanation is given in terms of Cherenkov light absorption and re-emission by the scintillator. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:42AM - 9:54AM |
CC.00007: An Improved Apparatus for $2\nu\beta\beta$ and ECEC Studies to Excited Final States Sean Finch, Rajarshi Raut, Werner Tornow To extend our successful measurements of $T_{1/2}$ for $^{100}$Mo and $^{150}$Nd to the first excited $0^+$ state to other nuclei of interest requires an increase in the coincidence efficiency of our two HPGe detector setup, due to low amounts of isotopically enriched target material. Such measurements provide valuable test cases for $2\nu\beta\beta$ nuclear matrix element calculations, which in turn are used to tune $0\nu\beta\beta$ nuclear matrix element calculations. Instead of the two previously used 80 mm diameter and 50 mm long crystals sandwiching the target of interest, we now use two HPGe clover detectors. Clover detectors not only provide higher coincidence efficiency for back-to-back gamma rays due to their larger volume, but also allow detection of coincidences from the $0^+\rightarrow 2^+ \rightarrow 0^+$ decay sequence of the daughter nucleus within the four-fold segmented clover detectors themselves. We report results on our coincidence efficiency measurements for the two clover detectors in close geometry and present background spectra taken above ground at TUNL and below ground at the Kimballton Underground Research Facility (KURF). Finally, we will discuss first spectra taken with an isotopically enriched $^{96}$Zr sample. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:54AM - 10:06AM |
CC.00008: Studies of energy losses in the lithiated layer of p-type point contact germanium detectors in the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR project Ryan Martin P-type point contact (PPC) high purity germanium detectors are an emerging technology for neutrinoless double beta decay searches and direct dark matter detection. Understanding their properties is of critical importance for these experiments. This talk will start with a short overview of the PPC detectors in low radioactive background experiments, particularly in the context of the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR experiment. A special class of events that take place near the lithiated n+ contact of these detectors will then be discussed. It is shown that there is a partially dead layer near the n+ contact in which gamma-ray interactions can mimic low energy depositions in the crystal. Understanding this source of backgrounds has a direct impact on the sensitivity of these detectors at low energies. [Preview Abstract] |
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