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About IsoDAR and DAEδALUS


The IsoDAR and DAEδALUS experiments are a two phase experiment to investigate neutrino oscillations in the hopes of shedding light on several current mysteries in the field such as sterile neutrinos, charge-parity or CP violations, and other nonstandard interactions. These questions are among the most current and important priorities for neutrino physics and may help explain several mysteries about the universe. Each step of the experiment is also intended to push the boundaries of current cyclotron and accelerator physics which may be of use in future academic or commercial purposes such as medical isotope production.

Phase I is the IsoDAR, Isotope Decay At Rest, Experiment at KamLAND. IsoDAR seeks to study the disappearance of anti-electron neutrinos to search for possible additional neutrino flavors designated as ‘sterile’. By using a well understood isotropic source fed by a 60 MeV cyclotron over a long period of time, IsoDAR will be able to collect large amounts of high statistics data that can be used to put strong limits on the properties of these sterile neutrinos, including the exact number of additional flavors. IsoDAR will also check the Standard Model electroweak theory by searching for Non-standard interactions that would point scientists towards new physics.

Phase II is DAEδALUS, the Decay at Rest Experiment for δcp studies At the Laboratory for Underground Science. DAEδALUS will use the IsoDAR proton beam as an injector for an even more powerful (800 MeV) cyclotron in order to produce higher energy neutrinos through a stopped pion beam. This source will produce muon and electron neutrinos and muon antineutrinos, which may then oscillate to produce electron antineutrinos whose appearance may be measured and compared to expectation. DAEδALUS will use this data to study CP-violations, violations which may answer questions about the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the observed universe.

The complete experiment will comprise several accelerator-based modules located at three different distances from a single gadolinium-doped water Cerenkov detector or a single liquid scintillator detector. Each of these modules will then make use of new low-cost, high power proton cyclotrons to produce decay-at-rest neutrino beams. The beam windows are staggered in time so that events measured by the detector can be uniquely identified with one of the neutrino beams and baselines. The object will then be to search for evidence of CP violation in the oscillation of muon antineutrinos to electron antineutrinos or ν(bar)μ → ν(bar)e over nominal baselines from 1 km to 20 km. Possible locations for the experiment are being explored at the moment inclduing the potential new Hyper-K detector.

This new type of search, which will complement the work of presently proposed experiments such as the long baseline neutrino experiment (LBNF/DUNE) at Fermilab, can provide measurements that will lead to a better understanding of CP violation in the neutrino sector.

If you would like some more introductory information to the physics behind our experiment, please click the links below:

Please see the links on the left if you would like further information about our collaboration, our research, or the experiment itself.

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Ernest Lawrence's original 1934 patent drawing for the cyclotron. Image credit: Wikipedia