Speaker
Kirk Bays
(University of California, Irvine)
Description
The diffuse supernova relic neutrino signal is of great interest due to
its correlation to cosmological parameters such as star formation rates.
This signal has never been seen. Currently inverse beta decay of
anti-neutrinos in the Super-Kamiokande (SK) detector provides the world's
best upper flux limit of 1.2 nu_e_bar events cm^2 s^-1, E_nu_bar > 19.3
MeV, which is very close to many theoretical predictions. A new method of
tagging radioactive backgrounds from cosmic ray muon spallation, improved
event reconstruction and selection, as well as addition of new data and a
new signal extraction method allows us to lower the energy threshold and
improve the sensitivity of the analysis. These new methods as well as
results using SK-I, SK-II, and SK-III data are presented.
Author
Kirk Bays
(University of California, Irvine)
