The talk summarizes general features of mechanisms that generate neutrino mass. The impact of current neutrino data on models for lepton mixing is discussed. Typical examples for new physics in neutrino experiments are given. A general prediction of almost all mechanisms for neutrino mass is the presence of neutrinoless double beta decay. The physics potential of this process is presented,...
"Underground" is getting more and more important for
researches with very low event rate. I will give a
overview the science that are carried out in underground.
A review of the theory and phenomenology of neutrino electromagnetic properties is presented. A massive neutrino even in the easiest generalization of the Standard Model inevitably has nonzero electromagnetic characteristics, at least nonzero magnetic moment. Although its value, determined by the neutrino mass, is very small, in other BSM theories much larger values of magnetic moments are...
XENON1T, the largest xenon TPC ever built, is performing the most sensitive direct search for WIMP dark matter on earth. As xenon TPCs become larger, long drift times and extreme fidelity requirements challenge the data acquisition, processing, and modeling. This talk explores how XENON1T dealt with these challenges for its first results, and what this implies for XENON1T's future physics...
A new type of particle detector which combines the advantages of liquid noble TPCs and superheated bubble chambers has been for the first time demonstrated with a 30-gram prototype scintillating liquid xenon bubble chamber operated at Northwestern University. The new technology has the potential, which is the aim of current ongoing work, to be virtually only sensitive to nuclear recoils at...
A minimal extension of the electroweak standard model with a massive neutrino allows a non zero magnetic moment, with the neutrino magnetic moment proportional to the neutrino mass. The experimental evidence from solar, reactor, atmospheric and accelerator neutrinos has demonstrated that neutrinos are massive, and may thus possess a non-null magnetic moment.
The limits of the effective...
The studies on neutrinos and dark matters rely on the direct detection with detectors composed by pure atom or crystal. As current experimental searches for neutrinos and dark matters have lowered the detector threshold down to the sub-keV regime [1, 2], accurate many-body calculations for atomic ionization are warranted for giving reliable results of experimental comparisons. With the...
Weakly Interactive Massive Particles (WIMPs) are among the most favored Dark Matter candidates.
As the Solar System moves through Dark Matter halo, the WIMPs may scatter on the nuclei in the
Sun/Earth, lose energy, and get trapped by their gravitational potentials. Their capture and subsequent
annihilations in the core of the Sun/Earth may subsequently give rise to neutrinos, through various...
PandaX experiment, located at China JinPing underground Laboratory (CJPL), is a 500kg scale liquid xenon dark matter direct detection experiment. With the first 98.7-day data, PandaX-II experiment obtained stringent upper limits on the spin-independent (SI) and spin-dependent (SD) WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering cross sections. Alternative models of dark matter are also explored using this...
A search for dark matter was conducted by looking for an annual modulation signal due to the Earth's rotation around the Sun using XMASS-I detector at Kamioka. It is a single phase Xe detector with 832 kg surrounded by low radioactive 642 PMTs with a water tank for cosmic muon veto. The detector has been performed satiable operation over 3 years with a very high light yield of 15...
The Axion is a hypothetical low-mass boson predicted by the Peccei-Quinn mechanism solving the strong CP problem. It is naturally also a cold dark matter candidate, thus, simultaneously solving two major problems of nature. All existing experimental efforts to detect QCD axions focus on a range of axion masses below 20 ueV. The mass range above ~40ueV, preferred by models in which the...
DEAP-3600 is a dark matter WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) search experiment, which aims to detect nuclear recoils from WIMP scattering in an argon target located $2$ km underground at SNOLAB. At WIMP masses of $100$ GeV, DEAP-3600 has a projected sensitivity of $10^{-46}$ cm$^{2}$ for the spin-independent elastic scattering cross section of WIMPs. The beta emissions from the...
Nonzero neutrino masses are required by the existence of flavor oscillations, with values at least of the order of 50 meV. We consider the gravitational clustering of relic neutrinos with minimal masses at the Earth neighborhood, where their number density is enhanced with respect to the average cosmic density. The local overdensity is found using N-one-body simulations, including an improved...
WISPy Dark Matter candidates have increasingly come under focus of scientific interest. In particular the QCD Axion might also be able to solve other fundamental problems such as strong CP-violation and could be responsible for inflation and structure formation in the early universe. Galactic Axions, Axion-Like-Particels and Hidden Photons can be converted to photons employing a surface...
The DEAP-3600 experiment is searching for dark matter with a single phase liquid argon (LAr) target, located at SNOLAB. For a background-free exposure of 3000 kg$\cdot$yr, the projected sensitivity to the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section at 100 GeV/c$^2$ WIMP mass is 10$^{-46}$ cm$^{2}$.
The experimental signature of dark matter interactions is keV-scale argon recoils producing 128...
The COSINUS (Cryogenic Observatory for SIgnals seen in Next-generation Underground Searches) was brought to life to give new insight to the long-standing dark matter claim of the DAMA/LIBRA experiment. To be immune to potential target-material dependencies also COSINUS, as DAMA-LIBRA, uses NaI as target material. Our detectors are cryogenic calorimeters with phonon-light-readout - unique in...
Double electron capture is a rare nuclear decay process in which two orbital electrons are captured simultaneously. Recently, this process has been attracting attention both theoretically and experimentally. Natural xenon contains the double electron capture nuclei 124Xe with an abundance of 0.095%. Even two-neutrino mode has not been observed for the nuclei so far. The XMASS program is...
DarkSide uses dual-phase Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers to search for WIMP dark matter. The current experiment, DarkSide-50, has a 50-kg-active-mass TPC surrounded by a borated-liquid-scintillator neutron detector and a water Cherenkov detector. DarkSide-50 has been running continuously since 2013, initially with atmospheric argon and then, starting in mid-2015, with argon from...
XENON1T, widely known as the next step in the challenging hunt for direct dark matter detection, provides the possibility for the study of interesting physics beside its main purpose. One promising example for this is the search for different beta decay modes of $^{124}$Xe. Here the process of Two Neutrino Double Electron Capture (2$\nu$DEC) is the first one to look for as it is predicted by...
Looking for low-mass WIMPs (<10 GeV) which could be pervading the galactic dark halo requires the use of light elements as target and detectors with very low energy threshold. The TREX-DM (TPC Rare Event eXperiment for Dark Matter) experiment is conceived to fulfil these requirements by means of a gas time projection chamber (TPC) equipped with novel micromesh gas structures (Micromegas)...
The PICO-60 experiment searches for dark matter using superheated liquid C$_3$F$_8$. The experiment is located at SNOLAB and is designed to be sensitive to spin-carrying dark matter particles. The PICO bubble chamber is a threshold detector that can be operated to be insensitive to minimally ionizing particles. Acoustic information is used to discriminate between nuclear recoil events and...
One technology being examined for future direct dark matter searches is a
single-phase noble liquid detector. The MiniCLEAN experiment is a test of
such an approach, using liquid argon to search for WIMPs via nuclear
recoils. The detector, located at SNOLAB, will have a 500 kg (150 kg)
target (fiducial) mass and is instrumented with cold photomultiplier
tubes. Pulse-shape discrimination...
From the experimental point of view, very little is known about the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter. In particular, the Weak Equivalence Principle, which is of paramount importance for the General Relativity, hasn't been directly probed with antimatter yet. The main goal of the AEgIS experiment at CERN is to perform a direct measurement of the gravitational force on...
CUPID-0 (former LUCIFER experiment) represents the first demonstrator towards CUPID (Cuore Upgrade with Particle IDentification). CUPID-0 -consisting of an array of 24 enriched Zn82Se scintillating bolometers totalling 3.5 10^25 82Se emitters- has started its background measurement on March 2017. Thanks to the scintillation signal readout, the troublesome alpha-induced background is...
The EDELWEISS collaboration is performing a direct search for WIMP dark matter using an array of up to twenty-four 860g cryogenic germanium detectors equipped with a full charge and thermal signal readout. The experiment is located in the ultra-low radioactivity background of the Modane underground laboratory, in the French-Italian Frejus tunnel. We present the analysis of data obtained in...
We have demonstrated a novel technique for measuring microscopic forces acting on optically levitated dielectric microspheres. The radiation field at the focus of a laser beam is used to levitate a microsphere in a harmonic trap where the displacement of the microsphere can be determined by the pattern of scattered light. Optical levitation isolates the microsphere from the surrounding...
The CRESST experiment, located at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy, searches for dark matter particles via their elastic scattering off nuclei in a target material.
The CRESST target consists of scintillating CaWO$_4$ crystals, which are operated as cryogenic calorimeters at millikelvin temperatures. Each interaction in the CaWO$_4$ target crystal produces a phonon signal and a...
The MAJORANA Collaboration has assembled an array of high purity Ge detectors to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay in $^{76}$Ge with the goal of establishing the required background and scalability of a Ge-based next-generation tonne-scale experiment. The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR consists of 44 kg of high-purity Ge (HPGe) detectors (30 kg enriched in $^{76}$Ge) with a low-noise p-type...
Liquid argon is known as an excellent target material for WIMP dark matter direct search experiment. Use of its ionization and scintillation signals, and scintillation pulse shape provides strong discrimination between the electron and nuclear events. Relatively small atomic mass (A=40) gives higher nuclear recoil energy for WIMP-Ar nuclear scattering, thus it potentially has higher...
The goal of the NEXT collaboration is to observe neutrinoless double beta decay in gaseous 136-Xe using a time projection chamber (TPC) capable of doing both energy and tracking reconstruction from light produced via electroluminescence (EL).
The collaboration is now taking data with NEXT-White (NEW), phase-I of the NEXT-100 detector. With about half of the NEXT-100 linear dimensions (about...
Experimental searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay (0$\nu\beta\beta$) are one of the most active research topics in neutrino physics. Its observation is in fact of major importance since it will prove the Majorana nature of neutrinos and may give access to their absolute mass scale.
Installed at Modane Underground Laboratory (LSM), the NEMO experiments provide a unique approach...
The damping of perturbations in the early universe produces a distortion in the energy spectrum of the CMB photons which depends intimately on the properties of the photon temperature transfer functions. Here we propose a new method for probing dark matter models on extremely small-scales (1 \, \textrm{Mpc}^{-1}\lesssim k \lesssim 10^{4} \, \textrm{Mpc}^{-1}) by looking at how these models...
The Bayesian discovery probability of future experiments searching for neutrinoless double-$\beta$ decay is evaluated under the popular assumption that neutrinos are their own antiparticles. A Bayesian global fit is performed to construct a probability distribution for the effective Majorana mass, the observable of interest for these experiments. This probability distribution is then combined...
The PICO-60 bubble chamber has concluded its dark matter search runs using a superheated liquid C$_3$F$_8$ target. Its replacement currently under commissioning, PICO-40L, is a redesigned bubble chamber with an inverted vertical orientation. This design allows the replacement of the water buffer with a second fused silica jar acting as a piston. The removal of the buffer fluid is intended to...
The China Dark Matter Experiment (CDEX) aims at direct searches of light Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) with an overburden of about 2400m rock. Results from a prototype CDEX-1 994 g p-type Point Contact Germanium(pPCGe) detector are reported. Research programs are pursued to further reduce the physics threshold by improving...
The nEXO Collaboration is designing a 5-tonne detector with initial neutrinoless double-beta decay sensitivity close to $10^{28}$years. The nEXO detector will be a homogeneous liquid xenon-136 time projection chamber inspired by the very successful EXO-200 detector. Energy resolution, event topology and event localization in the large homogeneous detector will work in concert to measure and...
Millimeter-thick charge-coupled devices (CCDs) are outstanding particle detectors. Although initially developed for near-infrared astronomy, the low pixel noise also makes them the most sensitive detectors to signals from ionizing radiation. By virtue of their very low energy threshold (<100 eV of ionizing energy) and their unique capabilities for background characterization based on their...
With the recent discovery of high-energy neutrinos of extraterrestrial origin by the IceCube neutrino observatory, neutrino astronomy is entering a new era. The highest energy neutrinos observed to date exceed 1 PeV in energy, a regime of particular interest because the neutrinos should point back to the still elusive accelerators of the highest energy Galactic and extragalactic cosmic rays....
DEAP-3600 is a novel experiment searching for dark matter particle interactions on 3.6 tonnes of liquid argon at SNOLAB. The argon is contained in a large ultralow-background acrylic vessel viewed by 255 8-inch photomultiplier tubes. Very good pulse-shape discrimination has been demonstrated for scintillation in argon, and the detector has been designed to allow control of (alpha,n) and...
The PICO collaboration has operated several generations of dark matter detectors at SNOLAB. The most recent results of the PICO 60 experiment and the plans for future superheated liquid dark matter detectors will be presented.
Searches for dark matter (DM) have become a major focus of the LHC physics programmes. Run-2 DM results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments showcase the ability of collider searches to compliment the sensitivity of direct and indirect detection experiments. In this talk, we review the strategy and status of DM searches in ATLAS and CMS, and show how recent results strongly constrain models of...
Since the discovery of neutrino oscillation we know that neutrinos have non-zero masses, but we do not know the absolute neutrino mass scale, which is as important for cosmology as for particle physics. The direct search for a non-zero neutrino mass from endpoint spectra of weak decays is complementary to the search for neutrinoless double beta-decay and analyses of cosmological data.
The...
The nature of dark matter is one of the great mysteries of modern physics and may be the result of
new particles beyond the standard model. The Axion, originally conceived as a solution to the strong-
CP problem in nuclear physics, is one well-motivated candidate. In 1983 Pierre Sikivie proposed an
experimental search technique, known as an axion haloscope, that relies on a large microwave...
Investigation of double beta decay (β+EC, EC/EC) of 58Ni was performed at the Modane underground laboratory (LSM, France, 4800 m w.e.) using the ultra-low background spectrometer Obelix and a sample of natural Ni. Spectrometer Obelix is based on P-type coaxial HPGe detector with a sensitive volume of 600 cm3 and relative efficiency of 160 %. The detector part of the cryostat is encircled by...
We directly measure exceptionally long ($\sim$ms) scintillation lifetimes of tetraphenyl-butadiene, a common wavelength shifter used on surfaces in liquid argon detectors. The magnitude of the scintillation tail relative to the prompt signal is found to differ under alpha, beta, and UV excitation, allowing for pulse-shape discrimination (PSD). Using PSD we show that surface backgrounds from...
Dark matter direct detection experiments rely heavily on calibrations to understand each detector’s response to predicted backgrounds. Certain backgrounds, such as neutrino-electron scatters, cannot be directly calibrated, and so beta- or gamma-decay sources are often used as a proxy. This treatment inherently assumes that interaction type and energy do not affect detector response to electron...
The ability to detect or "tag" the 136Ba daughter of 136Xe double beta decay in the nEXO liquid xenon TPC has the potential to eliminate essentially all background in the a second phase of nEXO operation. Several promising techniques for barium tagging are being developed within the nEXO collaboration. These include capturing the single 136Ba ion/atom in solid xenon on a cryogenic probe and...
Fifty years ago, Ettore Fiorini and collaborators published the first results of a $^{76}$Ge based search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ). In the ensuing five decades, the sensitivity for 0νββ searches using $^{76}$Ge has increased by five orders of magnitude, from the 1967 limit of T$_{1/2}$ ≥ 3 × 10$^{20}$ years to GERDA’s recent result of T$_{1/2}$ ≥ 5.3 × 10$^{25}$ years. The...
The SABRE (Sodium Iodide with Active Background Rejection) experiment will search for an annually modulating signal from Dark Matter (DM) using an array of ultra-pure NaI(Tl) detectors surrounded by an active scintillator veto to further reduce the intrinsic background. The expected rate of interactions between DM particles and the detector in fact modulates due to Earth’s changing velocity...
Neutrino-less double beta decay (0$\nu\beta\beta$) is acquiring great interest
after the confirmation of neutrino oscillation
which demonstrated nonzero neutrino mass.
Measurement of 0$\nu\beta\beta$ provides a test for the Majorana
nature of neutrinos
and gives an absolute scale of the effective neutrino mass.
In order to search for 0$\nu\beta\beta$ of $^{48}$Ca,
we proposed CANDLES detector...
The PandaX-III project at China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) will search for neutrinoless double beta decay of Xe-136 with high pressure xenon gas Time Projection Chambers (TPC). PandaX-III exploits the tracking capability of gaseous TPC to effectively identify possible signal and suppress background. The first TPC will contain 200 kg of enriched xenon at 10 bar and will be equipped...
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is an experiment constructed to search for neutrinoless double-beta decays in germanium-76 and to demonstrate the feasibility to deploy a large-scale experiment in a phased and modular fashion. It consists of two modular arrays of natural and 76Ge-enriched germanium detectors totaling 44.1 kg, located at the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility in...
The ANAIS (Annual modulation with NaI(Tl) Scintillators) experiment aims at the confirmation of the DAMA/LIBRA signal using the same target and technique at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory (LSC). Several 12.5 kg NaI(Tl) modules produced by Alpha Spectra Inc. have been operated in Canfranc during the last years in various set-ups; an outstanding light collection at the level of 15...
Astrophysical observations give overwhelming evidence for the existence of dark matter. While the DAMA collaboration has asserted for years that they observe a dark matter-induced annual modulation signal in their NaI(Tl)-based detectors, their signal has not been confirmed independently. Moreover, DAMA's observations are inconsistent with those from other direct detection dark matter...
High pressure gaseous Time Projection Chamber (TPC) provides a unique
combination of excellent energy resolution, event tracking for
background discrimination, and scalability, which are ideal for
neutrinoless double-beta decay searches. To harness the power of such
a TPC, a suitable charge readout scheme has to be realized. We are
developing a pixelated charge readout plane filled with an...
The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment is a large-scale experiment with the objective to determine the effective electron anti-neutrino mass with an unprecedented sensitivity of 0.2 eV/c² at 90% C.L. in a model-independent way. The measurement method is based on precision beta-decay spectroscopy of molecular tritium.
The experimental setup consists of a high luminosity windowless...
The positive observation of dark matter by the DAMA experiment has to be re-examined by a NaI(Tl) detector since there are multiple negative results shown by Xe experiments. The PICOLON experiment is trying to observe dark matter with multiple highly radio-pure NaI(Tl) scintillator detectors.
In recent a couple years, 3”φx3” and 4”φx3” detectors were constructed for future target of 5”φx5”...
The nEXO collaboration is developing a low-background detector to search for neutrinoless double beta decays in 5 tonnes of liquid xenon enriched in the isotope Xe-136. The detector concept is based on the success of the EXO-200 detector. However, the more than 20-fold increase in xenon mass would benefit greatly from the development of new technologies to record 175 nm scintillation light and...
The Electron Capture in $^{163}$Ho (ECHo) experiment is designed to investigate the electron neutrino mass $m_{\nu_e}$ with sub-$eV$ sensitivity by the analysis of the electron capture (EC) energy spectrum of $^{163}$Ho.
The sensitivity on the electron neutrino mass is crucially related to the energy available for the decay $Q_{EC}$ = $2833(30$stat$)(15$sys$)\,eV$, which has been...
Potassium-40 is a contaminant found in many rare-event searches. Its decay by electron capture to argon-40 emits X-rays and Auger electrons at energies of 3 keV and below, right in the region where direct searches for dark matter expect their signal. Most of the electron capture decays are to an excited state of 40Ar which emits a 1.461 MeV gamma ray allowing identification of the low-energy...
Project 8 is a tritium endpoint neutrino mass experiment utilizing a phased program to achieve sensitivity to the range of neutrino masses allowed by the inverted mass hierarchy. The Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) technique is employed to measure the differential energy spectrum of decay electrons with high precision. We present an overview of the Project 8 experimental...
A liquid scintillator containing a tetrakis (isopropyl acetoacetato) zirconium (Zr(iprac)4) has been developed for new project of neutrinoless double beta decay search using Zr-96 isotope, which is called ZICOS experiment. The liquid scintillator has 10 wt.% concentration of Zr(iprac)4, a light yield of 48.7+-7.1% for BC505, and an energy resolution of 4.1+-0.6% at 3.35 MeV assuming 40%...
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is currently searching for neutrinoless double-beta decays in germanium-76 and will demonstrate the feasibility to deploy a tonne-scale experiment in a phased and modular fashion. It consists of two modular arrays of natural and 76Ge-enriched germanium detectors totaling 44.1 kg, of which 29.7 kg is enriched, located at the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground...
Massive neutrinos demand to ask whether they are Dirac or Majorana particles.
Majorana neutrinos are an irrefutable proof of physics beyond the Standard Model.
Neutrinoless Double Electron Capture is not a process but a virtual $\Delta L = 2$ Mixing
between a parent $^AZ$ atom and a daughter $^A(Z-2)$ excited atom with two electron holes.
As a mixing between two neutral atoms and the...
The Jinping Neutrino Experiment will perform an in-depth research on solar neutrinos, geo-neutrinos and supernova relic neutrinos. Many efforts were devoted to the R&D of the experimental proposal. A new type of liquid scintillator, with high light-yield and Cherenkov and scintillation separation capability, is being developed. The assay and selection of low radioactive stainless-steel (SST)...
LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) is a forthcoming experiment designed to directly detect WIMP dark matter. It aims to detect WIMP interactions with a liquid xenon time projection chamber containing 5.6 tonnes of xenon in the fiducial volume. LZ is projected to have a sensitivity to the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section of 2.3x10^-48 cm^2 for a 40 GeV/c^2 mass WIMP after 1000 days of livetime. An...
In this talk, we will summarize the current status of global neutrino oscillation analyses in the three-neutrino framework. We will also discuss some scenarios where the measurement of the CP violation phase could be significantly affected by the presence of neutrino physics BSM.
VERITAS has been observing the northern sky at TeV energies with full sensitivity since 2007. Consisting of a ground based array of four 12m imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes sited in southern Arizona it is one of the world’s most sensitive detectors of gamma-rays between 85GeV to 30TeV. VERITAS maintains a broad scientific programme in many areas of astroparticle physics, including,...
LZ will be a 10 ton dual-phase xenon Time Projection Chamber (TPC) searching for WIMP dark matter via direct detection. In order to achieve our desired sensitivity, we require an extremely radiopure environment. Gamma backgrounds originate outside of the bulk xenon and are mitigated by xenon’s self-shielding properties, as well as our position reconstruction and veto capabilities. More...
The DeepCore infill array of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory enables observations of atmospheric neutrinos with energies as low as 5 GeV. Using a set of 40,000 neutrino events with energies ranging from 5.6 - 56 GeV recorded during three years of DeepCore operation, we measure the atmospheric oscillation parameters $\theta_{23}$ and $\Delta m^2_{32}$ with precision competitive with...
The Pierre Auger Observatory has been designed to investigate the origin and the nature of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays.
The combination of information from a surface array, measuring the lateral distributions of secondary particles at the ground, and the fluorescence telescopes, observing the longitudinal profile, provides an enhanced reconstruction capability and opens the way for a...
The measurement of the Neutrino Mass Ordering (NMO), i.e. the ordering of the three neutrino mass eigenstates, is one of the major goals of many future neutrino experiments. One strategy is to measure matter effects in the oscillation pattern of atmospheric neutrinos as proposed for the PINGU extension of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
Already, the currently running IceCube/Deepcore...
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is an air shower detector designed to study very-high-energy gamma rays (~100 GeV to ~100 TeV). It is located in the slopes of the volcano Sierra Negra in the state of Puebla, Mexico at an elevation of 4100 m. HAWC has a instantaneous field of view of 2 sr and a duty cycle of >95%, scanning 2/3 of the sky everyday. In this talk we will...
The planned SuperCDMS SNOLAB dark matter experiment will seek direct detection of WIMP-like dark matter with masses in the 0.5-10 GeV/c$^2$ mass range. The experiment will employ four types of cryogenic radiation detectors sensitive to phonon and ionization signals. At the lowest recoil energies electron recoil backgrounds are expected to limit the cross section reach to ~10$^{-43}$ cm$^2$...
The IceCube-DeepCore detector has unambiguously observed muon-neutrino disappearance due to oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos. The associated tau-neutrino appearance may be measured as a statistical excess of cascade-like events in the detector. New high statistics event selections, optimized for the study of oscillations around 10 GeV, provide increased sensitivity for the measurement of...
The PICO-500L detector will be a 500 litre bubble chamber designed to search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP). The experiment will cover a large range of mass and cross section parameter space, proving a variety of theoretical models. The PICO collaboration has built a well established technology, easily scalable and relatively inexpensive with flexibility to easily exchange...
PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) is a satellite-borne experiment. It was launched on June 15th 2006 from the Baikonur space centre on board the Russian Resurs-DK1 satellite. For about 11 years PAMELA took data, giving a fundamental contribution to the cosmic ray physics. It made high-precision measurements of the charged component of the cosmic...
Liquid xenon is an ideal target material to probe Dark Matter and neutrino physics well beyond the sensitivity of ongoing projects. The DARWIN observatory is a proposed detector with a multitude of physics channels spanning particle, astroparticle, and nuclear physics. DARWIN will probe vanilla WIMPs down to the signal from atmospheric neutrinos, and search for light WIMPs, solar axions,...
The 760 ton liquid argon ICARUS T600 detector performed a successful three-year physics run at the underground LNGS laboratories, studying neutrino oscillations with the CNGS neutrino beam from CERN, and searching for atmospheric neutrino interactions in cosmic rays. A sensitive search for LSND like anomalous nu_e appearance was performed, contributing to constrain the allowed parameters to a...
The KM3NeT Collaboration aims at the discovery and subsequent observation of high neutrino sources in the Universe (ARCA) and at the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy (ORCA).
This talk is focused on ARCA. The deployment of the firsts Detection Units at 3500 m depth offshore CapoPassero (Italy) started and two strings are in operation and data taking. ARCA will made of two...
Neutron-induced backgrounds are among the dominant backgrounds in low-background experiments. One of the main processes that produce these neutrons is the ($\alpha$,n) reaction occurring in detector components. An accurate understanding of these backgrounds is important for any low-background experiment. In this talk, we will present NeuCBOT, a new tool for calculating ($\alpha$,n) yields and...
Horizon-T is a newly completed (Oct. 2016) innovative detector system constructed to study temporary structure of Extensive Air Showers (EAS) in the energy range above ~10^16 eV coming from a wide range of zenith angles (0 - 80 degress). The system is located at Tien Shan high-altitude Science Station of Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences at approximately 3340 meters...
Germanium detectors with sub-keV sensitivities [1] offer a unique opportunity to study neutrino interactions and properties [2] as well as to search for light WIMP Dark Matter and axion-like particles [3]. The TEXONO Collaboration has been pursuing this research program at the Kuo-Sheng Neutrino Laboratory (KSNL) in Taiwan. We will highlight our results on neutrino electromagnetic properties,...
IceCube-Gen2, the proposed extension of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, will enhance both the surface and in-ice capabilities of the facility. Ideas for adding surface radio antennas are under discussion in addition to the upgrade and extension of the IceTop surface array using scintillator detectors. While the scintillators will primarily be used for improving the calibration and lowering...
Long-baseline neutrino experiments use neutrino beams produced at
accelerators to study the oscillation of neutrino flavours as they
traverse hundreds of kilometers between the primary beam target and a
far detector. Current long-baseline experiments have the world's best
sensitivity to the neutrino mixing angle theta_23 and the mass
splitting dm²_32. They additionally provide the only...
Long-baseline neutrino experiments have been crucial in our understanding of neutrino oscillations. Future long-baseline oscillation experiments will seek to address the remaining questions in the standard 3-neutrino oscillation model, including CP violation, the mass hierarchy, and maximal mixing, in addition to searching for new physics. In this talk, I will give an overview of the status...
Indirect searches for dark matter are a cornerstone in the dark matter particle identification program. Searches for stable messenger particles produced as part of the self-annihilation or decay of dark matter have resulted in stringent bounds on dark matter properties. Searches with gamma-rays, neutrinos, and charged cosmic-rays will be summarized and constraints on the dark matter...
Large area and low background experiments such as nEXO (next Enriched Xenon Observatory, a proposed 5 tonne-scale detector) are looking for new and innovative ways to improve the sensitivity of their detectors. Installing the photodetectors and their electronic readout directly in the detector active medium is among promising approaches. In turn, this introduces new constraints on the...
Radon is an important background consideration for rare-event searches such as dark matter direct detection and neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments. Materials of construction for these experiments often require screening of ultra-low radon levels, sometimes as few as tens of atoms in equilibrium. Radon emanation is one of the most sensitive and robust ways of making these measurements....
Active background rejection can be achieved in next generation bolometric experiments for rare event searches by detecting the light (scintillation or Cherenkov) that follows an energy deposition.
The CALDER (Cryogenic wide-Area Light Detectors with Excellent Resolution) project is part of the R&D activities under development for the upgrade of the CUORE experiment, a ton-scale neutrinoless...
All neutrino oscillation experiments face the problem of reconstructing the incoming neutrino energy using only the visible interaction products. Unfortunately, the initial neutrino interaction is not well understood, and some of the interaction products not are visible. In preparation for the analysis of neutrino oscillation data collected using liquid argon time projection chambers, the...
NEWAGE is a direction-sensitive direct dark matter search experiment with a three-dimensional gaseous tracking detector (micro-TPC). Our goals are detection of dark matter - nucleus scattering signal in the micro-TPC and investigation of the characteristics of the kinematics of dark matter in the Galaxy. Our direction-sensitive dark matter search by NEWAGE-0.3b’ has been performed in Kamioka...
Hyper-Kamiokande is a next generation water Cherekov detector consisting of 2 tanks, each with 187 kton fiducial mass, to be built in a staged approach. Hyper-Kamiokande will detect neutrinos produced by the upgraded J-PARC accelerator complex, as well as atmospheric neutrinos. It will enable us to search for CP violation in the lepton sector with an order of magnitude more data than current...
This presentation will provide a review of past and current techniques used to load metals in organic liquid scintillator. Both the techniques and their applications will be discussed.
The axion is a hypothetical particle invented for solving the CP problem in strong interactions.
The XMASS-I detector with 832 kg of natural xenon has the sensitivity for searching for axions produced in the Sun thanks to its low energy threshold and low background.
In the XMASS commissioning run, we obtain the model independent limit on the coupling for mass << 1 keV is g_aee < 5.4 x 10^-11...
Hyper-Kamiokande (Hyper-K) is a next generation water Chrenkov detector in Japan
consisting of two identical detectors (2x260 kton) with a staged construction.
Main goals of Hyper-K are a definitive measurement of CP violation
and neutrino mass ordering determination using beam neutrinos from J-PARC.
By relocating the 2nd detector in Korea with more than 3 times longer baseline
and more matter...
High-sensitivity, low-threshold material surface screening is necessary to meet the stringent radiopurity requirements for rare-event searches. The BetaCage is a proposed ultra-low-background time projection chamber (TPC) designed to screen alphas and low-energy betas emitted from material surfaces at trace levels, providing a transformative effect on isotopic assay efforts. I will describe...
The LUX experiment has been searching for direct evidence of rare events including the interactions galactic dark matter. LUX is a 250 kg active liquid-xenon target situated 1.5 km underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota (USA).
It is a liquid/gas time projection chamber capable of 3-D position reconstruction and nuclear recoil discrimination. We will...
DUNE, the DEEP Underground Neutrino Experiment, will be a groundbreaking experiment for long-baseline neutrino oscillation studies, and for neutrino astrophysics and nucleon decay searches. Planning of DUNE continues to proceed rapidly. The DUNE Far Detector will consist of four 10-kiloton fiducial volume modular liquid argon time-projection chambers (LArTPC) placed deep underground at the...
International Axion Observatory (IAXO) is a new generation axion helioscope aiming to search for solar axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) with a signal to background ratio of about 5 orders of magnitude higher than the one achieved by currently the most sensitive axion helioscope, CAST. IAXO relies on large improvements in magnetic field volume and extensive use of x-ray focusing optics...
After more than 20 years of data taking and analysis, Super-Kamiokande (SK) will undergo a major upgrade through the addition of 0.2% gadolinium sulfate by mass to its ultra-pure water. This will allow the efficient detection of neutrons, giving access to new physics signals while improving sensitivity to existing ones.
While this upgrade promises many improvements, there were several...
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment with primary physics goals of determining the neutrino mass hierarchy and measuring delta_CP with sufficient sensitivity to discover CP violation in neutrino oscillation. CP violation sensitivity in DUNE requires careful understanding of systematic uncertainty, with contributions expected from...
By reconstructing the arrival position and time of photons produced in
water or liquid scintillator on highly segmented fast photo-detectors one can
reconstruct tracks by using the `drift time' of photons, much as one does
with electrons in a Time Projection Chamber. I will present recent advances in event reconstruction techniques that are being developed in the context of a recently proposed...
The reference design of the near detector for the LBNE/F experiment is a high-resolution Fine-Grained Tracker (FGT) capable of precisely measuring all four species of neutrinos. Other detector options under consideration are liquid-argon and gaseous-argon TPCs, as well as a hybrid between the detector concepts. The goal of the ND is to constrain the systematic errors below the corresponding...
Dark matter constitutes over 80% of the matter in the Universe, but its composition remains one of the most profound mysteries in modern science. The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search at SNOLAB will use germanium and silicon ultra-high-resolution detectors to search for small energy depositions from galactic dark matter particles with masses below 10× the mass of the proton. Decay of radon...
XMASS is multi-purpose experiment using a single phase liquid xenon technology located underground at Kamioka Observatory in Japan.
XMASS-I detector aims mainly for direct detection of dark matter particles with 832 kg of liquid xenon.
The key idea to reduce the background at low energies in XMASS is to use liquid xenon itself as a shield. The clean core of the 832 kg liquid xenon volume is...
The Micro-X sounding rocket uses a Transition Edge Sensor (TES) array to make X-ray observations. The improved energy resolution of TESs compared to traditional space-based X-ray detectors brings new precision to both supernova remnant observations and the X-ray search for sterile neutrino dark matter. Current X-ray observations disagree over the potential presence of a 3.5 keV X-ray line...
Borexino is a 300 tons sub-MeV liquid scintillator solar neutrino detector
which has been running at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Italy) since 2007.
Thanks to its unprecedented radiopurity, it was able to measure the
flux of 7Be, 8B, pp, and pep solar neutrinos and to detect geo-neutrinos. A reliable simulation of the detector is an invaluable tool for all the Borexino physics...
In this talk, we discuss the effects of a non-negligible threshold energy on our model-independent methods developed for reconstructing WIMP properties by using measured recoil energies in direct Dark Matter detection experiments directly. Our expressions for reconstructing the mass and the (ratios between the) spin-independent and the spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon couplings have been modified....
Super-Kamiokande (SK), a 50 kton water Cherenkov detector in Japan, is observing neutrinos and searching for proton decay and dark matter decays. The installation of new front-end electronics in 2008 marks the beginning of the 4th phase of SK (SK-IV). With the improvement of the water circulation system, calibration methods, reduction cuts, this phase achieved the lowest energy threshold thus...
About 25 year ago LUNA (laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics) opened the era of underground nuclear astrophysics installing a home-made 50 kV ion accelerator under the Gran Sasso mountain. A second machine, with a terminal voltage of 400 kV, was then installed and it is still in operation. Most of the processes so far investigated were connected to the physics of solar neutrinos and...
This paper studies the influence of the Earth’s magnetic field on the extensive air shower particles generated by CORSIKA code. The effect causes an azimuthal asymmetry especially on positive and negative muons in highly inclined showers. This asymmetry is quantified by introducing a new observable in terms of a transverse distance (TD) between the positive and negative muon barycenters across...
We consider dark matter models in which the mass splitting between the dark matter particles and their annihilation products is tiny. Compared to the previously proposed Forbidden Dark Matter scenario, the mass splittings we consider are much smaller, and are allowed to be either positive or negative. To emphasize this modification, we dub our scenario "Impeded Dark Matter". We demonstrate...
The DarkSide-50 two-phase liquid argon (LAr) detector has been searching for weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter for the past three years, and during the last two years has been successfully operating the detector with argon that was extracted from underground CO$_2$ wells in Cortez, Colorado in the US. This source of argon has been long shielded from cosmic rays entering...
Supernova explosions in our galaxy may be rare, but supernovae themselves are not. On average, there is one ccSN somewhere in the universe each second. The neutrinos emitted from all of these ccSN since the onset of stellar formation have suffused the universe. We refer to this thus-far unobserved flux as the “relic” supernova neutrinos.
The flux of the supernova relic neutrinos is expected to...
Light component (H&He) energy spectrum of 125 TeV - 3 PeV is measured by the ARGO-YBJ detector with a wide field-of-view imaging Cherenkov telescope.
1.filling the gap between the direct observations of CREAM and the EAS xperiment, such as KASCADE;
2.The knee of (700±230_stat.±70_sys.) TeV is found with a significance of 4.2 sigma;
3.Spectra index: β_1=-2.56 ± 0.05 below the knee; β_2=-3.24 ±...
Many theories of dark matter (DM) predict that DM particles can be captured by stars via scattering on ordinary matter. They subsequently condense into a DM core close to the center of the star and eventually annihilate. In this work, we trace DM capture and annihilation rates throughout the life of a massive star and show that this evolution culminates in an intense annihilation burst...
We calculate the solar neutrino and antineutrino flux in the keV energy range. The dominant thermal source processes are photo production (γe → eνν ̄), bremsstrahlung (e + Ze → Ze + e + νν ̄), plasmon decay (γ → νν ̄), and pair emission in free-bound and bound-bound transitions of partially ionized elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. To calculate the latter we use libraries of...
In the VIP2 (VIolation of the Pauli Exlusion Principle) experiment at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS) we are searching for possible violations of standard quantum mechanics predictions. With high precision we investigate the Pauli Exclusion Principle and the collapse of the wave function (collapse models). We will present our experimental method of searching for possible small...
Calorimeters are the key detectors for future space based experiments focused on high-energy cosmic rays spectra measurements.
Thus it is extremely important to optimize their geometrical design, granularity and absorption depth,with respect to the total mass of the apparatus, which is among the most important constraints for a space mission.
Calocube is a homogeneous calorimeter whose basic...
Astroparticle Physics in Hyper-Kamiokande
The Hyper-Kamiokande is a next generation water Cherekov detector consisting of two tanks, each with 187 kton fiducial mass, to be built in a staged approach. The total fiducial mass will be nearly 20 times larger than the highly successful Super-Kamiokande while significantly improved photodetectors will be used with the same 40 % photocoverage. The...
KAGRA is a 3-km interferometric gravitational wave telescope, which is being built at the underground site of Kamioka mine in Gifu prefecture, Japan. It is the first km-scale interferometer constructed at a quiet and stable underground site to reduce seismic and Newtonian noise. Also, it will be the first km-scale interferometer to utilize cryogenic mirrors to reduce thermal noise.
The...
There are a number of papers that calculate how the limits or positive results of current experiments would be if some specific twist is applied to the standard interpretation framework (e.g., SI interactions with f_p \neq f_n). These works are usually not performed by members of the experiments, and therefore make very simple assumptions on experimental details like efficiencies....
DarkSide-20k is a proposed 20 tonne fiducial mass liquid argon TPC that will perform an instrumental background-free search for WIMP dark matter. The TPC will be outfitted with more than 125,000 silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) grouped into 5210 single-channel, $25\ {\rm cm}^2$ photosensors that are sensitive to single photoelectrons. We will present the performance of the photosensor and...
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) experiment, a 40-kton underground liquid argon time-projection-chamber detector, will have unique sensitivity to the electron flavor component of a core-collapse supernova neutrino burst. We present expected capabilities of DUNE for measurements of neutrinos in the few-tens-of-MeV range relevant for supernova detection, and the corresponding...
The detection of a gravitational wave signal in September 2015 by LIGO interferometers, announced jointly by LIGO collaboration and Virgo collaboration in February 2016, opened a new era in Astrophysics and brought to the whole community a new way to look at - or "listen" to - the Universe. In this regard, the next big step will be the joint observation with at least three detectors at the...
The galaxy rotation curve, gravitational lensing and the existence of large scale structure imply that the present Universe is filled with a mysterious form of invisible matter, called “dark matter (DM)”, which is about 27% ( roughly 5 times of visible matter) of the total energy budget. Hitherto the existence of DM has been consolidated via its gravitational interaction in a cosmological...
As is well known, dark matter direct detection experiments will ultimately be limited by a "neutrino floor," due to the scattering of nuclei by MeV neutrinos from, e.g., nuclear fusion in the Sun. Here we point out the existence of a new "neutrino floor" that will similarly limit indirect detection with the Sun, due to high-energy neutrinos from cosmic-ray interactions with the solar...
A new estimate of the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB) is presented, for scenarios with different core collapse rates and different distribution of black-hole forming collapses with the progenitor mass. The $\bar \nu_e$ component of the DSNB above 11 MeV of energy can be as large as $\phi \sim 3.7~{\rm cm^{-2} s^{-1}}$, and the contribution of black hole-forming collapses could...
Dark matter decays or annihilations that produce line-like spectra may be smoking-gun signals. However, even such distinctive signatures can be mimicked by astrophysical or instrumental causes. We show that velocity spectroscopy-the measurement of energy shifts induced by relative motion of source and observer-can separate these three causes with minimal theoretical uncertainties. The...
We explore oscillations of the solar 8B neutrinos in the Earth in detail. The relative excess of night νe events (the Night-Day asymmetry) is computed as function of the neutrino energy and the nadir angle η of its trajectory. The finite energy resolution of the detector causes an important attenuation effect, while the layer-like structure of the Earth density leads to an interesting...
Solar neutrinos are a unique probe of the neutrino oscillation physics and of solar models. An overview of the solar neutrino flux prediction and of the current available results will be presented. The new experimental data about the measurement of the flux of low energy solar neutrinos obtained with the Borexino detector (LNGS) will be shown and discussed.
The talk will cover the latest status and results for direct dark matter search with XENON1t and it will give an outlook on the planned improvements and upgrades.
Deep Underground Laboratories (DULs) with an overburden larger than 1000 m.w.e. provide unique and multidisciplinary infrastructures to carry out mainly research on extremely rare phenomena such as neutrino interactions, interactions of hypothetical dark matter particles and neutrinoless double beta decay. However, geophysics and biology in extreme environments are also studied in DULs. In...
The detection of rare solar neutrino signals in deep underground laboratories has confronted background challenges for more than 50 years beginning with the famous Chlorine experiment. In this talk I will review the successful background strategies employed for solar neutrino measurements, up to the present, and will summarize related strategies for background suppression for direct...
Double Chooz (DC) is a reactor neutrino oscillation experiment based at the Chooz nuclear power plant in Northern France. In 2011 DC was the first reactor neutrino experiment to report indication of non-zero $\theta_{13}$, the last unmeasured neutrino mixing angle of the PMNS matrix. This result was confirmed in 2012 by independent experiments. Before the completion in December 2014 of the...
Axion like particles (ALPs) are fundamental pseudo particles with properties similar to Axions that have been involved to solve the strong CP problem in Quantum Chromodynamics. ALPs can oscillate into photons and vice versa in the presence of an external magnetic field. This oscillation of Photon and ALPs could have important implications for astronomical observations, i.e. a characteristic...
The large datasets and often low signal-to-noise inherent to the raw data of modern astroparticle experiments calls out for increasingly sophisticated event classification techniques. Machine learning algorithms, such as neural networks, have the potential to outperform traditional analysis methods, but come with the major challenge of identifying reliably classified training samples from real...
The sub-GeV spectrum of cosmic ray antinuclei is a largely unexplored hunting ground for products of dark matter decay or annihilation. Because the conventional astrophysical background is extremely low, detection of even a few antideuterons in this regime would be a strong hint of a dark matter source. Meanwhile, measuring the low-energy antiproton spectrum will constrain both dark matter...
This presentation will outline the basic rhetorical principles for successful translation of scientific ideas into public knowledge. It will specifically focus on the definition of humans as a “Story Species” and demonstrate the art of science communication by turning the neutrinoless double beta decay equation into an intelligent story.
RENO (Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation) is the first reactor
neutrino experiment which began data-taking using both near and far detectors in 2011.
The last unknown neutrino mixing angle theta_13 in the PMNS matrix was successfully
measured in 2012 by RENO using 220 days of data from 6 reactors in Yonggwang, Korea.
In 2015 RENO made the first measurement of |dm^2_ee| and obtained...
This talk will briefly outline the educational importance of play, and how and why to apply hands-on interactive learning to astrophysics outreach, following lessons learned at Science North, a third-generation science center in Sudbury, Ontario. Applying these lessons outside of the science center context will also be discussed.
The AMS-02 experiment has recently released a new measurement of the cosmic-ray antiproton spectrum. Assuming that cold dark matter (CDM) is made of self-annihilating particles, the AMS-02 data can be used to constrain the annihilation cross section. It is known however that CDM structures itself on scales much smaller than typical galaxies. This structuring translates into a very large...
The Higgs can couple to SU(2)xU(1)xSU'(2)xU'(1) models in such a way that the diagonal vector-like SU(2)xU(1) corresponds to the electroweak gauge symmetry. This leads to a new class of Higgs portal dark matter models within reach of direct search experiments. I will introduce the corresponding dark matter models and their implications for direct search experiments. If time permits, I will...
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose underground experiment and the largest liquid scintillator (LS) detector going for neutrino mass hierarchy, precise neutrino oscillation parameter measurement and studies of other rare processes which include but not limited to solar neutrino, geo-neutrino, supernova neutrinos and the diffuse supernova neutrinos...
The wide range of probes of physics beyond the standard model (BSM) leads to the need for tools that combine experimental results to make the most robust possible statements about the validity of theories of new physics and the preferred regions of their parameter space. In this talk, I will introduce a new code for such analyses: GAMBIT, the Global and Modular BSM Inference Tool. GAMBIT is a...
The Earth is an anti-neutrino star, radiating more than 10$^{25}$ anti-neutrinos to space every second. This immense luminosity is fueled predominantly by the ß$^-$ decays of radiogenic isotopes in the Earth's crust and mantle. The anti-neutrinos produced by these decays, called geo-neutrinos due to their geophysical origin, give us important clues about the composition of the Earth's interior...
Thanks to an overburden of 6 km water equivalent and to a large mass of ultrapure liquid scintillator, the SNO+ detector is designed for performing low energy neutrino physics measurements and will address several fundamental physics goals, among which the study of geoneutrinos. The geoneutrino signal produced by U and Th distributed in the whole Earth’s mantle is comparable to that originated...
This work presents indirect searches for dark matter (DM) as WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) using atmospheric neutrino data of Super-Kamiokande-I,-II,–III and -IV (1996-2016). The latest results of the search for WIMP-induced neutrinos from the Sun, the Earth’s core and the Milky Way are discussed.
We search for an excess of neutrinos as compared to the expected level of...
The HOLMES project aims to directly measure the electron neutrino mass using the electron capture decay (EC) of 163Ho down to the eV scale. It will perform a precise measurement of the end-point of the 163Ho calorimetric energy spectrum to search for the deformation caused by a finite electron neutrino mass. The choice of 163Ho as source is driven by the very low Q-value of the EC reaction...
The neutrino spectra and flux were reevaluated during the preparation of the current experiments devoted to the measurement of $\theta_{13}$. Some discrepancies between data and the theoretical predictions in some neutrino experiments at short distances were observed when using the new predicted flux and spectra. This problem has been called the Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly (RAA), which...
The newly established CONUS ($\bf CO$herent $\bf N$e$\bf U$trino Nucleus $\bf S$cattering) project by the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK), Heidelberg, will be presented. The project aims at detecting coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) with high-purity Germanium (Ge) detectors with an extremely low threshold, surrounded by an elaborated shield and exposed to a...
The CeSOX experiment will search for light sterile neutrinos with an intense 144Ce-144Pr antineutrino generator deployed next to the Borexino detector located at the Laboratory Nazionali del Gran Sasso. Data taking is expected to start during spring 2018.
The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) gamma-ray observatory is a continuously operated, wide field-of-view (FOV) observatory sensitive to 100 GeV - 100 TeV gamma rays and cosmic rays. HAWC has been making observations since summer 2012 and officially commenced data-taking operations with the full detector in March 2015. With a FOV of 2 steradians, HAWC observes 2/3 of the sky in 24 hours...
In a dedicated run where protons from the Fermilab Booster were
delivered directly to the steel beam dump of the Booster Neutrino
Beamline, the MiniBooNE detector was used to search for the
production of dark matter particles via vector-boson mediators,
as predicted by vector portal models of dark matter. In the
scenario that was considered, the interactions of the dark matter
particles are...
The Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) has two main goals: (1) a precision measurement of final state neutron multiplicity in neutrino interactions as a function of momentum transfer in the range of 0.5-1.5 GeV, and (2) first deployment and performance characterization of Large Area Picosecond Photo Detectors (LAPPDs) for use in future neutrino experiments. ANNIE Phase...
In the recent years, major milestones in neutrino physics were accomplished at nuclear reactors: the smallest neutrino mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ was determined with high precision and the emitted antineutrino spectrum was measured at unprecedented resolution. However, two anomalies, the first one related to the absolute flux and the second one to the spectral shape, have yet to be solved. The...
It has been recently speculated that new “secret” interactions among sterile neutrinos, mediated by a gauge boson X, can inhibit or suppress the sterile neutrino thermalization, due to the production of a large matter potential term in the flavour evolution equation for the active-sterile system.
In this way it would be possible to relieve the tension among laboratory sterile neutrinos...
A light sterile neutrino that mixes with the active states has been proposed to explain anomalies in short baseline neutrino oscillation data. Constraints on the mass and mixing parameters are usually presented by showing results from complementary neutrino oscillation experiments. However, measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, most recently by the Planck satellite, constrain the...
The emission of antineutrinos from fission products in nuclear reactors offers a path to discover, monitor, or exclude the existence of reactors at distances of tens to hundreds of kilometers. The WATCHMAN (WATer Cherenkov Monitor of AntiNeutrinos) experiment is a proposed kiloton volume gadolinium-doped water Cherenkov detector designed to demonstrate this capability. Antineutrinos are...
Super-Kamiokande (SK) is a 50 kilotonne water Cherenkov detector aiming for the detection of several physics such as solar, atmospheric, astrophysical neutrinos, proton decay, WIMP dark matter, etc. It has been running over 20 years since 1996, and achieved several remarkable outcomes in the field of the particle and astrophysics, one of which is the discovery of the neutrino oscillation,...
I will present an (entirely subjective) overview of the current status of cosmology, followed by a discussion of what we can expect in the coming years.
The realization of multimessenger astrophysics will open up a new field of exploration of the most energetic phenomena in the universe. Astrophysical messengers associated with each of the four fundamental forces reach detectors buried deep underground or underwater, spread across wide swaths of land, and orbiting high above us in space. Detecting coincident signals amongst these experiments...
The EXO-200 experiment has made both the first observation of the double beta decay in Xe-136 and the most precisely measured half-life of any two-neutrino double beta decay to date. Consisting of an extremely low-background time projection chamber filled with ~150 kg of enriched liquid Xe-136, it has provided one of the most sensitive searches for the neutrinoless double beta decay using the...
SNO+ is a multipurpose neutrino physics experiment, located 2 kilometers underground in the SNOLAB facility in Sudbury, Canada. It is the successor of the SNO experiment, replacing the heavy water in the Acrylic vessel (AV) with 780 tonnes of liquid scintillator, Linear Alkyl Benzene (LAB). The AV is surrounded by 7000 tons of ultrapure light water, which shields the detector from naturally...
Borexino experiment is located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy, and its primary goal is detecting solar neutrinos, in particular those below 2 MeV, with unprecedentedly high sensitivity. Its technical distinctive feature is the ultra-low radioactive background of the inner scintillating core, which is the basis of the outstanding achievements obtained by the...
The nEXO Collaboration is developing a tonne-scale neutrinoless double beta decay experiment employing an enriched $^{136}$Xe target. The enriched liquid xenon is operated as a time projection chamber (TPC) providing event timing and position reconstruction. The goal is to search for excess events at the 2458 keV end-point of the $^{136}$Xe double beta-decay energy spectrum. An event excess at...
The ECHo experiment is designed to measure the $^{163}$Ho electron capture decay spectrum up to its endpoint at $2.833\,keV$.
Such a measurement offers great potential to reach sub-$eV$ sensitivity on the absolute electron neutrino mass $m_{\nu_{e}}$.
A crucial aspect in this effort is the thorough understanding of the low energy background to experiment below $3\,keV$ and its reduction....
The KATRIN (KArlsruhe TRitium Neutrino-) experiment will measure the endpoint region of the tritium-$\beta$-decay spectrum to determine the neutrino mass with a sensitivity of 0.2$\thinspace$eV/c$^2$. To achieve this sub-eV sensitivity the energy of the decay electrons will be analyzed using a $\mbox{MAC-E-filter}$ type spectrometer. The retarding potential of the MAC-E-filter of $\mbox{-18.6...
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is an experiment constructed to search for neutrinoless double-beta decays in germanium-76 and to demonstrate the feasibility to deploy a large-scale experiment in a phased and modular fashion. It consists of two modular arrays of natural and 76Ge-enriched germanium detectors totalling 44.1 kg, located at the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility in...
The Borexino experiment at the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory is following a rich solar neutrino physics program. The Borexino most recent results are the precise measurements of the $^7$Be, pep and pp solar neutrino fluxes as well as the observation of season modulation of the $^7$Be solar neutrino rate. These results were derived from the so-called Borexino Phase-II data (i.e. data collected...
The SNO+ detector main physics goal is the search for neutrinoless double-beta decay, a rare process which if detected, will prove the Majorana nature of the neutrinos and provide information on the absolute scale of the neutrino absolute mass. Additional physics goals of SNO+ include the study of solar neutrinos, anti-neutrinos from nuclear reactors and the Earth's natural radioactivity as...
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is an experiment constructed to search for neutrinoless double-beta decays in germanium-76 and to demonstrate the feasibility to deploy a large-scale experiment in a phased and modular fashion. It consists of two modular arrays of natural and 76Ge-enriched germanium p-type point contact detectors totaling 44.1 kg, located at the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground...
\lettrine[nindent=0em,lines=3]{D}iscovered by Hess during some experiments about air ionization, cosmic rays are constituted by particles coming from the space. In the past, cosmic rays allowed the development of Particle Physics; indeed, thanks to their high energy not achievable in laboratories, they enabled new particles discovery. Today, interest about this radiation concerns both...
Electromagnetic properties of massive neutrinos [1,2] and their effects on neutrino oscillation phenomena are brought into focus. The searches for neutrino millicharges, charge radii and magnetic moments in astrophysics and laboratory measurements are outlined [2,3]. Prospects of probing these neutrino characteristics with JUNO are discussed.
[1] C. Giunti and A. Studenikin, *Neutrino...
In the standard model neutrinos are massless left-handed fermions which very weakly interact with matter via exchange of the W and Z0 bosons. The development of our knowledge about neutrino masses and mixing provides a basis for exploring neutrino properties and interactions beyond the standard model (BSM). In this respect, the study of nonvanishing electromagnetic characteristics of massive...
The increased demand of scientific collaborations for large quantities of enriched isotopes is a growing trend and shall be taken seriously by the global suppliers of isotope products. This trend opens up new opportunities for scientists to bring their experiments to a higher level.
Speaking of the next generation of low-background experiments it is important to focus on 3 key factors...
A spectral fitter based on the graphics processor unit (GPU) has been developed for Borexino’s solar neutrino analysis. It is able to shorten the fitting time to a superior level compared to the CPU fitting procedure. In Borexino solar neutrino spectral analysis, fitting usually requires around one hour to converge since it includes time-consuming convolutions in order to account for the...
Super-Kamiokande Gadolinium (SK-Gd) project is an upgrade proposed to the SK detector by dissolving a Gd-compound into the detector water. With this upgrade, electron antineutrino events can be efficiently identified by tagging the 8 MeV gamma cascade emitted by a neutron capture on Gd. Utilizing this technique, we are aiming to make the first observation of the supernova relic neutrinos, as...
We consider the construction of interval estimates for the parameters with one-sided constraints. We show that the so-called method of sensitivity limit yields a correct solution of the problem [1]. Derived are the solutions for the cases of a continuous distribution with non-negative estimated parameter and a discrete distribution, specifically a Poisson process with background. For both...
It was shown for the first time in [1] that neutrino spin (or spin-flavor) precession can be engendered not only by neutrino interaction with the transversal magnetic field but also by neutrino interaction with matter in the case when there is a transversal matter current or matter polarization. The generalized Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi equation [2-4] for description of the neutrino spin...
CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) is an array of 988 TeO2 bolometers to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay (NDBD) of 130Te. CUORE-0, the first CUORE-style detector with 1/19 of the mass was taking data from 2013 to 2015. Besides producing the world-leading 130Te NDBD half-life limits, CUORE-0 is also suitable for searching for 130Te double beta decay to...
Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) detections could give an indirect signal of PeV neutrino emission. Recently, Pierre Auger observatory reported the distribution of arrival directions of the highest energy cosmic rays. These events were collected in 10 years of operations with declinations between -90◦
and +45◦. The IceCube neutrino telescope reported the detection of 54 extraterrestrial...
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is a $^{76}$Ge-based neutrinoless double-beta decay ($0\nu\beta\beta$) experiment. Staged at the 4850’ level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility, the DEMONSTRATOR operates an array of high-purity p-type point contact Ge detectors deployed within a graded passive shield and an active muon veto system. The present work concerns the two-neutrino double-beta...
In the history of physics, ideas on space and time have changed the course of physics a number of times; this is another such event. This time, we postulate ‘space and time’ as a flow of quantum gravity energy, having the absolute velocity c (same as velocity of light), where time is the delay in the spread of space (delay from infinite velocity flow, when there would be no time), such a flow...
Time Projection Chambers (TPCs) are widely used in particle physics experiments, with noble element targets currently being used to search for neutrino-less double beta decay, look for interactions of dark matter, and characterize the properties of neutrino oscillations. In order to further improve the sensitivity of these experiments, the next generation of proposed TPC detectors will contain...
SNO+ is a multipurpose, large-scale neutrino experiment located deep underground in Sudbury, Ontario, whose aims include studies of neutrinoless double beta decay, solar neutrinos, reactor neutrinos and other more exotic physics. SNO+ is currently taking data in its initial water-fill phase, which will be used to commission upgrades to the electronics and calibration sources. During this...
The Spin Light of Neutrino (SLnu) is a magnetic moment electromagnetic radiation of a massive neutrino moving under the influence of external conditions (matter or external fields) [1]. The effect, being proportional to the second power of the neutrino magnetic moment, is very faint for the moderate neutrino energies. However it has a strong energy dependence and in the light of the recent...
T2K (Tokai-to-Kamioka) is a long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiment in Japan. The physics program is focused on the study of neutrino oscillations. For the oscillation analysis, events induced by a generated neutrino beam are measured in a set of detectors close to the beam source and compared with observations of beam-induced events in a far detector (Super-Kamiokande) at a distance of...
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kt liquid scintillator detector. Its main goal is the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy with neutrinos from two nuclear power plants at 53 km baseline. Fast and effective muon tracking is essential for the veto of atmospheric muons and the cosmogenic background they produce as well as the detection of atmospheric muon...
The High-Energy Particle Detector (HEPD) is one of the payloads of the CSES space mission. The HEPD is built by the Italian “Limadou” collaboration and has different goals. It will study the temporal stability of the inner Van Allen radiation belts, the precipitation of trapped particles in the atmosphere and the low energy component of the cosmic rays (5 - 100 MeV for electrons and 15 - 300...
The SOX (Short distance neutrino Oscillations with BoreXino) experiment aims to confirm or confute the eV mass sterile neutrino hypothesis by the standard disappearance technique and possibly by the direct observation of the oscillation pattern. Both the measurements will be performed with a very intense (5 PBq) 144Ce-144Pr antineutrino source placed under the large scale and very low...
The two neutrino double-beta decay of $^{136}$Xe, with a half-life of $2.165\pm0.016\text{(stat.)}\pm0.059\text{(syst.)}\times10^{21}$y, is among the rarest nuclear processes ever directly observed. The hypothesized neutrinoless double-beta decay of $^{136}$Xe, which nEXO aims to observe, is expected to be that much rarer, with a half-life of at least $1\times10^{26}$y at 90% C.L. Sufficient...
The PICO collaboration employs bubble chambers to search for direct interactions with dark matter particles. The operating parameters of these detectors can be tuned so that they are almost completely insensitive to gamma rays and other near-minimum-ionizing radiation that is the main background for most dark matter detectors. PICO 40, the next generation detector, will incorporate several...
The energy spectra of galactic cosmic rays carry fundamental information regarding their origin and propagation, but, near Earth, cosmic rays are significantly affected by the solar magnetic field which changes over time. The time dependence of proton and electron spectra were measured from July 2006 to December 2009 by PAMELA experiment, that is a ballooon-borne experiment collecting data...
Gravity is known to be a contracting force. But if it is a constant and absolute velocity (same as velocity of light) flow-- that creates space and time itself-- it becomes an expanding force—of course till the backup of the constant and consistent force (putting space as a flow and time as the delay in the flow from infinite value) continues. Applied this way, gravity though a contracting...
The study of the neutrino electromagnetic (EM) properties opens a door to explore physics beyond the Standard Model. The neutrino magnetic moment (NMM) have been the most studied neutrino EM property since the neutrino was proposed in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli. If we consider Majorana neutrinos, the NMM matrix will be composed by three transition magnetic moments (TMM) which give us information...
