News & Events
Janina Hakenmueller (Duke)
McDonald Institute Seminar Series
Location: Queen's: STI 501
Date: November 7, 2024
Time: 1:30pm - 2:30pm
First observation of CEvNS with HPGe spectrometers at SNS
Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) describes the interaction of the neutrino with the nucleus as a whole. The interaction is coherent for neutrino energies below about 50 MeV as provided for example by the spallation neutron source (SNS) at the Oak Ridge National laboratory, USA. The COHERENT experiment located there observes the tiny recoil of the nucleus hit by the neutrino with various technologies.
In my talk, I will present the latest result achieved with high-purity germanium spectrometers with a significance of 3.9 sigma for an analysis threshold of 1.5 keV ionization energy and a total active mass of about 11 kg. I will discuss the analysis in detail and show how these detectors are highly suitable to observe CEvNS. Finally, I will provide an outlook on the future plans for the setup including using machine learning to achieve a lower energy threshold.
The McDonald Institute seminar will be held in Stirling 501. A zoom link is also available and was shared via email from Melissa Diamond or Aaron Vincent. Please reach out to them to get access.