Bulletin of the American Physical Society
82nd Annual Meeting of the APS Southeastern Section
Volume 60, Number 18
Wednesday–Saturday, November 18–21, 2015; Mobile, Alabama
Session H1: Fundamental Symmetries |
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Chair: Nadia Fomin, University of Tennessee Room: Riverview Plaza Hotel Bon Secour Bay Ballroom I |
Friday, November 20, 2015 1:30PM - 2:06PM |
H1.00001: The story of neutrinos and the Universe Invited Speaker: Erin O'Sullivan Detection of the elusive neutrino has revealed many surprising discoveries over the past few decades including oscillations and, as a consequence, the conclusion that neutrinos have mass. In addition to having interesting particle properties, neutrinos also carry information from their birthplace: the energy cycle that drives our Sun, supernova explosions and other astrophysical events, and the early universe. This talk will explore the history of neutrino detection, will highlight a few of the important discoveries (including this year's Nobel prize), and will discuss the future for neutrino research with a focus on how we can use neutrinos as a probe for some of the most poorly understood phenomena in the Universe. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 20, 2015 2:06PM - 2:42PM |
H1.00002: The Neutron Lifetime Invited Speaker: Fred Wietfeldt The neutron is a key component of ordinary stable matter. However when free from the confines of an atomic nucleus the neutron is unstable; it decays to a proton, electron, and antineutrino with a lifetime of about 15 minutes. Neutron decay is the prototype for nuclear beta decay and other semileptonic weak interactions. The neutron lifetime provides direct access to key parameters in the Standard Model of particle physics. It was important in the early universe and is needed for theoretical calculations of primordial element abundances. The neutron lifetime has been the subject of more than 20 major experiments over the past 60$+$ years. Two main methods, the neutron beam method and the cold neutron bottle method, have approached the 10$^{\mathrm{-3}}$ precision level in recent years, but unfortunately these two methods currently disagree by more than 8 seconds (almost 4 standard deviations). I will discuss the motivation and physics of the neutron lifetime, briefly review past and current experiments, and present details of a new project to measure the neutron lifetime to \textless 0.3 s precision in a beam method experiment at the NIST Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, MD. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Dept. of Energy Office of Science. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 20, 2015 2:42PM - 3:18PM |
H1.00003: The Search for Dark Matter and Status of the LZ Experiment Invited Speaker: Ion Stancu The nature and origin of dark matter is one of the most compelling mysteries of contemporary science. For over two decades, physicists have been trying to detect dark matter particles via collisions on target nuclei, with little success to date. The LZ collaboration is in the process of finalizing the design of a massive dark matter detector, to be installed at the 4850 level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. The detector will feature several tons of target nuclei and use the established liquid xenon TPC technology to achieve unprecedented sensitivity to a wide range of dark matter candidates. The experiment will reach a sensitivity to spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section approaching $2 \times 10^{-48}\,\mbox{cm}^2$ in 3 years of operation. This represents an improvement of almost three orders of magnitude over current results, covering a substantial range of theoretically motivated dark matter candidates. [Preview Abstract] |
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