Speaker
Dr
Sofia Andringa
(LIP)
Description
SNO+ is a new neutrino physics experiment, that will start collecting data in 2016, reusing the SNO detector with 780 tons of liquid scintillator as an active medium. It will perform several low energy measurements, namely the search for neutrinoless double beta decay, for which the scintillator will be loaded with tellurium. Anti-neutrino interactions can be identified through a characteristic delayed coincidence signature, between a positron annihilation and a neutron capture.
SNO+ will measure anti-neutrinos from nuclear reactors, useful for oscillation studies, and geo-neutrinos, useful for Geophysics studies. The reactor and geo-neutrinos have very different energy spectra, which is the main variable to disentangle them. We explore the possibility to use time variations of the expected fluxes and some direction sensitivity to increase the separation between the anti-neutrino sources, for example between geo-neutrinos from crust and mantle.
The main advantage of SNO+ for the anti-neutrino analysis is that the flux is dominated by reactors in two different directions and two distances of the order of 100 kms, which give rise to sharp spectral features in the oscillated energy spectrum and a high sensitivity to the neutrino squared mass difference parameter. On the other hand, the small number of near-by reactors implies also a small background for the geo-neutrino measurement, to be done in a new geological location.
Author
Dr
Sofia Andringa
(LIP)
