Physics Colloquium: The SNO+ experiment: current status and prospect

Thursday, November 19, 2020

3:30 PM-4:30 PM

Yi-Hsuan (Cindy) Lin, PhD, SNOLAB

The SNO+ experiment is a multi-purpose neutrino detector, with the main physics goal of searching for neutrinoless double beta decay in ¹³⁰Te. SNO+ is located 2 km underground at SNOLAB in Vale's Creighton Mine in Sudbury, Ontario. The centerpiece of SNO+ is a 12-m diameter acrylic vessel, containing the target medium. The acrylic vessel is surrounded by 7 kilotonnes of ultrapure water shielding and about 9300 photomultiplier tubes. SNO+ is operating in three phases, each defined by the target medium: water, scintillator, and scintillator loaded with 3.9 tonnes of natural tellurium for the neutrinoless double beta decay search. In the water phase, SNO+ has collected ultra-low background data, confirmed previous measurements of solar neutrino flux, and set world-leading limit on invisible modes of proton decay. Using an Americium-Beryllium neutron calibration source, SNO+ has measured the highest neutron detection efficiency for pure water Cherenkov detectors and this rate will inform physics analyses, such as the antineutrino measurement. With the detector more than half-filled with scintillator now, SNO+ focuses on understanding the detector behavior and backgrounds, in order to measure low-energy solar neutrino flux and antineutrinos. A combination of hardware upgrades and analysis efforts to reduce backgrounds will contribute to the primary goal of a neutrinoless double beta decay search.

Contact Information

Professor Michelle Dolinski
mjd396@drexel.edu