Speaker:
Joel W. Walker
Institution:
Sam Houston State University
Speaker Link:
Date:
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Time:
11:00 am
Location:
NS2 1201
Abstract:
Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) is a long-standing prediction of the Standard Model, which has just been observed experimentally within the last two years. Simultaneous interaction at low momentum transfer with the large number of particles in a complex nucleus produces a substantial enhancement for this process. I will describe a few of the ongoing searches with reactor and beam sources, including the new MInER experiment. If the CEvNS process is observed with large statistics, it will present a new laboratory for testing physics beyond the Standard Model that is connected to the neutrino sector, for example a heavy Z-prime, the neutrino magnetic moment, and new very light vector, axial, or scalar mediators. In particular, anomalies in the expected magnitude and spectrum of neutrino flux have been pointed out for several years in reactor and Gallium data, and recently, the accelerator-based MiniBoone experiment has presented results consistent with neutrino anomalies observed previously by LSND. Various CEvNS experiments are well-positioned to probe possible connections of a short-baseline neutrino oscillation with eV scale mass gap to existing anomalies. Considerable complementarity in the flavor and mass space is possible by a combination of experimental efforts.
Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) is a long-standing prediction of the Standard Model, which has just been observed experimentally within the last two years. Simultaneous interaction at low momentum transfer with the large number of particles in a complex nucleus produces a substantial enhancement for this process. I will describe a few of the ongoing searches with reactor and beam sources, including the new MInER experiment. If the CEvNS process is observed with large statistics, it will present a new laboratory for testing physics beyond the Standard Model that is connected to the neutrino sector, for example a heavy Z-prime, the neutrino magnetic moment, and new very light vector, axial, or scalar mediators. In particular, anomalies in the expected magnitude and spectrum of neutrino flux have been pointed out for several years in reactor and Gallium data, and recently, the accelerator-based MiniBoone experiment has presented results consistent with neutrino anomalies observed previously by LSND. Various CEvNS experiments are well-positioned to probe possible connections of a short-baseline neutrino oscillation with eV scale mass gap to existing anomalies. Considerable complementarity in the flavor and mass space is possible by a combination of experimental efforts.
Host:
Angelo Monteux