NPAC (Nuclear/Particle/Astro/Cosmo) Forums |
Organized by: Prof. Lu Lu
Events During the Week of December 11th through December 18th, 2016
Monday, December 12th, 2016
- No events scheduled
Tuesday, December 13th, 2016
- No events scheduled
Wednesday, December 14th, 2016
- New opportunities with solar neutrinos
- Time: 2:30 pm
- Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Shirley Li, Ohio State University
- Abstract: Crucial questions about solar neutrinos remain unanswered. Our knowledge of stellar fusion processes and neutrinos themselves is incomplete. Neutrino detectors such as Super-Kamiokande have the exposure needed, but backgrounds are limiting. A leading background is the beta decays of isotopes produced by cosmic-ray muons and their secondary particles, which initiate nuclear spallation reactions. I will discuss my comprehensive studies of the spallation backgrounds, from calculating their production rates, to understanding their production mechanisms, to how to implement better background rejection methods. I will also discuss the applications of our MeV work in detecting PeV astrophysical neutrinos in IceCube.
- Host: Stefan Westerhoff
Thursday, December 15th, 2016
- A feasibility study of detecting 1e18 eV neutrinos with a dedicated Cherenkov Telescope Array
- Time: 4:00 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Nepomuk Otte , Georgia Tech
- Abstract: The detection of astrophysical neutrinos with IceCube and solid predictions of the flux of cosmogenic neutrinos have renewed the interest in detecting neutrinos at 10^9 GeV. To date no experiment exists with sufficient sensitivity at these energies and thus the motivation for this study. I take a fresh look at the Earth-skimming technique in which a tau neutrino converts in the Earth's mantle and the decay products of the tau are detected with Cherenkov telescopes that monitor a large volume of atmosphere. In this talk I present a conceptual design study of an array of Cherenkov telescopes that is optimized for 10^9 GeV and has a sensitivity that is competitive with other proposed experiments.
- Host: Justin Vandenbroucke
Friday, December 16th, 2016
- No events scheduled