Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2016
Volume 61, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 16–19, 2016; Salt Lake City, Utah
Session S17: Neutrino Oscillation Searches |
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Sponsoring Units: DPF Chair: Hallsie Reno, University of Iowa Room: 251E |
Monday, April 18, 2016 1:30PM - 1:42PM |
S17.00001: PROSPECT: the Precision Reactor Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment Donald Jones PROSPECT is a phased experiment consisting of segmented Li-loaded liquid scintillator antineutrino detectors designed to probe short-baseline neutrino oscillations and precisely measure the reactor antineutrino spectrum. The experiment will be located at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Lab. The first phase is a movable 3~tonne detector located 7-9~m from the compact, highly enriched uranium core. Over the past three years, PROSPECT has deployed multiple prototype detectors at HFIR to understand the local background environment and demonstrate active and passive background rejection. A two-segment prototype has been developed that demonstrates critical subsystems of the full detector. Measuring the neutrino spectrum from $^{235}$U will give insight to the recent spectral discrepancies and provide an important benchmark for future reactor experiments. As a high statistics experiment, PROSPECT will probe the sterile neutrino best-fit region within one year of operation at HFIR. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 1:42PM - 1:54PM |
S17.00002: Characterizing and validating the PROSPECT segmented scintillator detector design Danielle Norcini The PROSPECT experiment will use two segmented liquid scintillator detectors positioned 7-20m from the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) core to perform a search for eV-scale sterile neutrinos and measure the antineutrino spectrum of uranium-235. A multi-year R\&D program focused on background studies at the HFIR reactor, lithium-loaded liquid scintillator development, and characterization of multiple prototype detectors has culminated in the design of a segmented, 3-ton liquid scintillator detector for PROSPECT Phase I. This detector design is being validated with a 50~liter, 2-segment prototype detector, PROSPECT-50. We will report results of on-going performance and calibration studies and discuss implications for the PROSPECT physics program. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 1:54PM - 2:06PM |
S17.00003: Segmented Detector Calibration Techniques for the PROSPECT Experiment Daniel Davee PROSPECT will make the most precise measurement of the $^{235}$U anti-neutrino spectrum to date and search for eV-scale sterile neutrinos. The proposed detector is composed of 120 $^6$Li loaded liquid scintillator filled cells, and uses Inverse Beta Decay (IBD) ${\nu+p\rightarrow e^{+}+n}$ to detect reactor anti-neutrinos. Because the positron produced in IBD carries most of the $\nu$ energy, the response throughout the entire segmented detector to electron-like energy depositions must be determined with high precision via an extensive calibration program. To this end the detector is designed to allow for the insertion of both optical and radioactive sources to test each performance of cell individually without changing the optical response. In addition to these measures, cosmogenic sources will be used to probe energy response of the detector at high energies. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 2:06PM - 2:18PM |
S17.00004: Search for the appearance of atmospheric tau neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande Zepeng Li Super-K is a 50 kiloton Water Cherenkov detector with 22.5 kiloton of fiducial volume located at a depth of 2700 meters water equivalent. The large target mass in the fiducial volume offers an opportunity to search for rare tau neutrino appearance from oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos. Events after reduction are classified by a particle identification, based on a neural network (Multilayer Perceptrons), that is optimized to distinguish tau leptons produced by charged-current tau neutrino interactions from electron and muon neutrino interactions in the detector. Super-K atmospheric neutrino data are fit with an unbinned maximum likelihood method to search for tau neutrino appearance. The talk presented results with data taken between 1996 and 2014, comprising 4582 days of live time. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 2:18PM - 2:30PM |
S17.00005: Search for Nucleon Decay in SNO+ light water Morgan Askins Data from the upcoming water-phase of the SNO+ experiment can be used to constrain the lifetime for nucleon decay to invisible modes such as $n\rightarrow\nu\bar{\nu}\nu$. The results will be an improvement on the previous SNO results due to the decreased background from solar neutrino neutral current reactions on deuterium, which are not present in the SNO+ light water. Simulations predect a sensitivity of $\tau_n > 1.25\times10^{30}$ s and $\tau_p > 1.38\times10^{30}$ s at 90% C.L. after 6 months of running, twice the proton sensitivity of KamLAND and an order of magnitude on previous SNO neutron results. Data taking for this phase of SNO+ is planned to start within the year. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 2:30PM - 2:42PM |
S17.00006: Cherenkov and scintillation light separation on the TheiaR$\&$D experiment Javier Caravaca, Benjamin Land Identifying by separate the scintillation and Cherenkov light produced in a scintillation medium enables outstanding capabilities for future particle detectors, being the most relevant: allowing particle directionality information in a low energy threshold detector and improved particle identification. The TheiaR$\&$D experiment uses an array of small and fast photomultipliers (PMTs) and state-of-the-art electronics to demonstrate the reconstruction of a Cherenkov ring in a scintillation medium, based on the number of produced photoelectrons and the timing information. A charged particle ionizing a scintillation medium produces a prompt Cherenkov cone and late isotropic scintillation light, typically delayed by $<$1ns. The fast response of our PMTs and DAQ provides a precision well below the ns level, making possible the time separation. Furthermore, the usage of the new developed water-based liquid scintillators (WBLS) provides a medium with a tunable Cherenkov/Scintillation light yield ratio, enhancing the visibility of the dimer Cherenkov light in presence of the scintillation light. Description of the experiment, details of the analysis and preliminary results of the first months of running will be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 2:42PM - 2:54PM |
S17.00007: Measurement of electron longitudinal diffusion coefficient in liquid argon Yichen Li, Wei Tang, Xin Qian The electron longitudinal diffusion coefficients in Liquid Argon (LAr) are measured for a range of electric fields from 0.05 to 2.0 kV/cm up to a maximum drift distance of 120 mm using the two experimental setups at BNL. The measurement principle, apparatus, and data analysis are described. Our result represents the world's best measurement of electron longitudinal coefficients in this range. The measured longitudinal diffusion results are directly applicable to the existing experiments such as MicroBooNE and are essential for the future LAr based experiment detector design such as SBN and DUNE. We also report the performance of the gas purification system, which is important for the design of the purification system of future large LArTPCs. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 2:54PM - 3:06PM |
S17.00008: Exploring a Non-Minimal Sterile Neutrino Model at IceCube Zander Moss, Carlos Arguelles In a recent analysis of atmospheric muon neutrino disappearance, IceCube placed strong bounds on active-sterile neutrino mixing thus increasing the tension between disappearance measurements and the various signal excesses seen in short baseline and reactor neutrino experiments. The growing tension from terrestrial experiments and also from cosmology invites us to move from the minimal sterile neutrino model to one where the sterile neutrino has new interactions and additional particles can be considered. In particular, we will discuss a model of neutrino decay in which active and sterile neutrinos decay into light particle states. This decay will modify the neutrino disappearance oscillation probabilities. These modifications may alleviate the tension. Since the parameter space under consideration is large, we will study it in two ways. First, we assume an anarchic decay structure, sampling uniformly on the SU(N) flavor structure group. Second, we will perform an MCMC analysis using one year of IceCube data. By comparing the signals from anarchic sampling to the IceCube data and an MCMC analysis thereof, we draw conclusions about both the viability of the model and the likelihood that a random draw from the structure group could have produced the observed behavior. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, April 18, 2016 3:06PM - 3:18PM |
S17.00009: The SNO+ Scintillator Purification Plant and Projected Sensitivity to Solar Neutrinos in the Pure Scintillator Phase Teal Pershing The SNO+ detector is a neutrino and neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment utilizing the renovated SNO detector. In the second phase of operation, the SNO+ detector will contain 780 tons of organic liquid scintillator composed of 2 g/L 2,5-diphenyloxazole (PPO) in linear alkylbenzene (LAB). In this phase, SNO+ will strive to detect solar neutrinos in the sub-MeV range, including CNO production neutrinos and pp production neutrinos. To achieve the necessary detector sensitivity, a four-part scintillator purification plant has been constructed in SNOLAB for the removal of ionic and radioactive impurities [1]. We present an overview of the SNO+ scintillator purification plant stages, including distillation, water extraction, gas stripping, and metal scavenger columns. We also give the projected SNO+ sensitivities to various solar-produced neutrinos based on the scintillator plant’s projected purification efficiency. \\ 1. R. Ford, “A scintillator purification plant and fluid handling system for SNO+.” AIP Conference Proceedings 1672, 080003 (2015); doi: 10.1063/1.4927998 [Preview Abstract] |
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