Columbia Neutrino Group
PIs: Georgia Karagiorgi, Michael Shaevitz, Leslie Camilleri
Postdocs: Jose Crespo, Mark Ross-Lonergan
Physicist Programmer: William Seligman
Grad Students: Davio Cianci, Edward Dunton, Guanqun Ge, Yeon-jae Jwa, Iris Ponce, Harrison Siegel, Kathryn Sutton
Also Summer Research for Undergraduates Program
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Current Experiments
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MicroBooNE - Liquid Argon Booster Neutrino Oscillation Experiment at Fermilab
MicroBooNE
is a follow-up experiment to the MiniBooNE oscillation experiment which
observed an anomalously high number of low energy electromagnetic
electron or photon events over expectation. The MiniBooNE signal
may be from some type of new physics either within or beyond the
current particle physics model.
MicroBooNE will address this anomaly using the capability to
distinguish
between electrons and photons by using the experiment's 175 ton, liquid argon,
time-projection-chamber (shown on the right).
Additionally, MicroBooNE will make improved neutrino cross section
measurements and provide an important R&D platform for future large
liquid argon detectors that are being designed to probe CP violation,
proton decay, and supernova detection.
MicroBooNE
Talks and Posters
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SBND - Near Detector for the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program at Fermilab
The Short-Baseline
Near detector (SBND or LAr1-ND) will be constructed 100 m from
the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) target. In conjunction with
MicroBooNE, SBND will
enable important tests of high-∆m2
neutrino oscillations through both disappearance and appearance
searches. Due to the high event rate at the near location,
significant physics results can be achieved with a relatively short run.
SBNDWhitepaper
The SBN physics program will use three liquid-argon detectors along the
BNB line: SBND, MicroBooNE, and ICARUS-FD. The SBN program
will be able to perform the most sensitive search to date for sterile
neutrinos at the eV mass-scale through both appearance and
disappearance oscillation channels.
SBN Proposal
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Future Experiments Being Developed
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The Columbia
neutrino group has joined the effort towards a
new, second-generation neutrino detector at the South Pole called
IceCube-Gen2. The existing IceCube detector recently started
observing
a significant flux of high-energy neutrinos of cosmic origin which
represents the “first light” of the emerging field of neutrino
astronomy. The IceCube-Gen2 project is to provide a substantial
expansion of the current 1 km3 IceCube detector with the aim of
instrumenting a 10 km3 volume.
The IceCube upgrade program also includes the ‘The Precision IceCube
Next Generation Upgrade” (PINGU), which is proposed to be a high
resolution low-energy in-fill of the central region of IceCube. PINGU
will feature the world's largest effective volume for neutrinos at an
energy threshold of a few GeV and be able to distinguish between the
normal and inverted NMH at 3σ significance with an estimated 3.5 years
of data.
IceCube-Gen2: A Vision
for the Future of Neutrino Astronomy in Antarctica
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IsoDAR (Isotope
Decay-at-Rest) is an experiment to search for electron antineutrino disappearance
using an extremely high intensity source
of neutrinos from the decay of 8Li isotopes. The
large number of 8Li isotopes are produced using a 10 ma, 60 MeV proton
cyclotron that is being developed in collaboration with industrial
partners. The source can be placed near a large scintillator
detector such as KAMLAND to detect the antineutrino interaction rate
versus distance using the inverse beta-decay process, νe + p → e+ + n.
Neutrino oscillations would be detected by seeing an anomalous change
in rate versus distance divided by energy, L/E. IsoDAR can also
investigate
non-standard νe interactions
by making precision measurements of the rate for antineutrino-electron
elastic scattering, νe + e− → νe + e− .
IsoDAR at KamLAND Conceptual Design Report (CDR)
IsoDAR at KamLAND and
JUNO
Precision
Antineutrino-Electron Scattering with IsoDAR
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IsoDAR
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DAEδALUS
(Decay-At-rest Experiment for δCP studies At the
Laboratory for Underground Science) is a phased program for
CP-violation studies associated with νμ → νeneutrino
oscillations. Such CP violation could be connected to
the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. The experiment
measures the oscillation wave using three high-intensity, pion
decay-at-rest neutrino sources located at 1.5 km, 8 km, and 20 km from
an underground, ultra-large water or oil based neutrino detector.
The three neutrino sources use 800 MeV proton beams from 10 ma
cyclotrons that pulse sequentially to identify the source to detector
distance. The DAEδALUS data set combined
with a νμ → νe data set from an experiment such as Hyper-K will have
extcellent sensitivity for detecting if CP violation effects are
present.
Cyclotrons as Drivers
for Precision Neutrino Measurements
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DAEδDALUS |
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DUNE - Long Baseline
Neutrino Facility and DUNE Experimental Collaboration
This long-baseline neutrino program is composed
of a new neutrino source (LBNF) combined with a new set of detectors
(DUNE) optimized for a broad physics program. The program is
conceived around three central components: (1) the new, high intensity
neutrino source generated from a megawatt-class proton accelerator at
Fermi NationalAccelerator Laboratory, (2) a fine-grained near neutrino
detector installed just downstream of the source, and (3) a massive
liquid argon time-projection chamber deployed as a far detector deep
underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. This
facility, located at the site of the former Homestake Mine in Lead,
South Dakota, is ~1300 m from the neutrino source at Fermilab — a
distance (baseline) that delivers optimal sensitivity to neutrino
charge-parity (CP) symmetry violation and mass ordering effects.
The DUNE physics program will address three of the top questions in
particle physics: 1) What caused the preponderance of matter over
antimatter in the early Universe? 2) What is the dynamics of supernova
bursts that produced the heavy elements necessary for life? and
3) Do protons eventually decay?
The Long-Baseline
Neutrino Experiment: Exploring Fundamental Symmetries of the Universe
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Past Experiments still Analyzing:
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Double Chooz is an experiment located in northern
France. It searches for the oscillations of electron antineutrinos
produced by nuclear power reactors. Neutrinos (and also antineutrinos),
of which there are three types, have been found to oscillate from one
type to another. These oscillations are governed by several parameters
of which one, the mixing angle θ13, was first shown to be fairly large
by the Double Chooz experiment. Currently, the Double Chooz experiment
has measured this mixing angle to be 8.7 ± 1.5 degrees. The value of θ13 is very important for future neutrino
oscillation experiments since its value is not only crucial for
interpreting these measurements but its size also determines how big CP
violating effects will be.
Improved measurements
of the neutrino mixing angle θ13 with the Double Chooz detector
Reactor electron
antineutrino disappearance in the Double Chooz experiment
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MiniBooNE was designed to address the LSND νμ → νe oscillation anomaly. The MiniBooNE experiment ran for
ten years, from 2002 until 2012, switching between neutrino and
antineutrino mode running. MiniBooNE searched for νμ
→ νe and νμ → νe
and oscillations by measuring the rate of observed νe
events and testing whether the measured rate was consistent with the
estimated background rate.
The Events/MeV
figure shows the reconstructed neutrino and antineutrino events
compared to the MC simulation. For the neutrino data, the
magnitude of the observed versus predicted excess is similar to
expectations from the LSND antineutrino signal, but the shape is
different and mainly below 500 MeV. In contrast, the antineutrino
excess shows a similar magnitude and shape with respect to the LSND
predictions and is fully consistent with the LSND signal. This
behavior leads to the allowed regions shown in the Δm2
vs sin22θ figure where the MiniBooNE allowed region is
somewhat below the LSND region for neutrinos.
The LSND
and MiniBooNE Oscillation Searches at High Δm2
Significant Excess of ElectronLike Events in the MiniBooNE Short-Baseline Neutrino Experiment
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