Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2018 Annual Meeting of the APS Four Corners Section
Volume 63, Number 16
Friday–Saturday, October 12–13, 2018; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
Session J07: Neutrinos |
Hide Abstracts |
Chair: Andrea Favali, Los Alamos National Lab Room: JFB B-1 |
Saturday, October 13, 2018 8:00AM - 8:24AM |
J07.00001: Searching for Sterile Neutrinos with the CAPTAIN-Mills Detector at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center Invited Speaker: Robert Cooper Sterile neutrinos are non-Standard Model neutrinos whose existence would significantly change our understanding of particle physics. The MiniBooNE and LSND experiments have shown compelling evidence for sterile neutrinos in short baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. In these experiments, an excess of electron neutrino appearance was observed from a pure muon neutrino beam, and if these data are interpreted as sterile neutrino oscillations, the mass scale is Δm2 ∼ 1 eV2. Analogous muon neutrino disappearance measurements have shown no anomalies, but these experiments have been performed at a different energy scale compared to LSND and MiniBooNE. CAPTAIN-Mills is a new experiment to search for neutrino disappearance at the LSND energy scale. CAPTAIN-Mills will use a 10-ton liquid argon scintillation detector to leverage the enhanced cross section from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. CAPTAIN-Mills will operate at the Lujan Center at LANSCE which is a 100-kW stopped pion source that nominally delivers an 800-MeV proton beam onto a tungsten target at 20 Hz with a pulse width of 290 ns. This fast pulsing is crucial for isolating the monoenergetic muon neutrino in time and reducing neutron backgrounds. In this talk, I will describe the current state of sterile neutrinos, describe the CAPTAIN-Mills detector and the Lujan Center, and show results from our neutron background survey. |
Saturday, October 13, 2018 8:24AM - 8:36AM |
J07.00002: Analysis of scintillation light in a liquid argon veto system for neutrino-less ββ decay detectors Ryan Gibbons, Michael Gold, Doug Fields, Neil McFadden Liquid argon (LAr) is used as a scintillation material for active shielding for the Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrino-less ββ Decay (LEGEND), while simultaneously serving to cool the germanium detectors. It is essential to have an efficient veto to suppress extraneous background events, as T1/2 > 5.3 x 1025 yr for neutrino-less ββ decay in germanium-76. To improve the effectiveness of a LAr system, we study how impurities affect the LAr scintillation light. The light is detected by photomultiplier tubes immersed in the LAr. Both the number of photons and the lifetime of the triplet excited state in LAr have been shown to be reduced by the amount of impurities in the argon and can therefore affect the efficiency of a LAr veto system. We have demonstrated the effect of impurities in argon and the removal of impurities with a simple argon re-circulation system. We also plan to investigate xenon doping as a method for further improving the veto system. |
Saturday, October 13, 2018 8:36AM - 8:48AM |
J07.00003: Background Characterization and Rejection for a Precision Measurement of Electron Neutrino Appearance with the Short Baseline Neutrino Program Far Detector (ICARUS) Christopher Hilgenberg, Robert J Wilson The LSND and MiniBooNE experiments both observed low-energy excesses of νe like events. One solution is the existence of one or more sterile neutrinos with Δm2 ~ 1eV2. The Short Baseline Neutrino Program (SBN) consists of three liquid argon time projection chambers (TPCs) along the Booster Neutrino Beam. We will cover the sterile allowed oscillation parameter space with ~5σ sensitivity. In particular, we will measure νμ disappearance and νe appearance. The latter is more challenging given the low rate and susceptibility to backgrounds. Each of the SBN detectors will operate at shallow depth, exposed to a large flux of cosmic rays. For ICARUS, 3m of concrete overburden will absorb charged hadrons and γ's. The remaining μ's passing through or near the TPC can produce γ's which mimic a genuine νe charged current interaction. Additionally, γ's produced by beam interactions in nearby materials pose a similar background. Several methods exist to reject these events using the TPC alone. ICARUS will be equipped with a cosmic ray tagging system (CRT), a tracking detector external to the cryostat. Work is underway to optimize the complementarity of the CRT and TPC for maximum sensitivity. |
Saturday, October 13, 2018 8:48AM - 9:00AM |
J07.00004: Study of Reconstructed 39Ar Beta Decays at the MicroBooNE Detector Alex Flesher, Michael R Mooney, Hannah Rogers Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) are imaging detectors that can be used to reconstruct the energies of particles and their trajectories with fine-grained resolution. One open question regarding large LArTPCs is their capability of measuring low-energy, point-like charge depositions such as those associated with interactions of low-energy supernova burst neutrinos within the detector. Given their point-like nature and low energies, naturally occurring 39Ar beta decays in LArTPCs provide a powerful resource in probing energy scales relevant for the reconstruction of supernova burst neutrinos and solar neutrinos at future large-scale LArTPC experiments such as DUNE (Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment). We present the first study of reconstructed 39Ar beta decays in a large LArTPC with data from MicroBooNE, a large (85-ton active mass) LArTPC neutrino experiment operating near the surface at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. The use of 39Ar beta decays as a potential calibration source in large LArTPC detectors is also discussed in detail. |
Saturday, October 13, 2018 9:00AM - 9:12AM |
J07.00005: Expected and achievable accuracy in estimating parameters of standing accretion shock instability (SASi) fluctuations from neutrinos and gravitational wave oscillations Colter Richardson, Jonathan Westhouse, Michele Zanolin, Cecilia Lunardini, Kei Kotake Core collapse supernovae are one of the most interesting sources of gravitational waves. When the progenitor star is particularly massive, hydrodynamic instability called standing accretion shock instability can develop and it is characterized by deterministic oscillations in the gravitational wave signal as well as in the neutrino luminosity with frequencies of 100hz. In this talk we will review current efforts to extract physical information from the SASI components of the gravitational wave and enhance the detectability of gravitational waves with such components both using laser interferometers and neutrino detectors. |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700