The SHiP Experiment : The Hunt for the Hidden Sector
Seminar Type: Experimental Particle Physics Seminar
Speaker: Adjunct Professor Albert De Roeck
Date/Time: Tuesday Apr 23, 2024 4:10pm
Location: PHY 285
Description: In March 2024 CERN management announced their decision to select the SHiP (Search for Hidden Particles) Experiment for the new Beam Dump Facility (BDF) at the 400 GeV proton SPS accelerator at CERN. The experiment, originally proposed around 2015, has been redesigned over the last years to fit in and use the planned upgrade in the ECN3 (“North") area, to conduct its physics program. SHiP is optimized to search for feebly interacting GeV-scale particles and to perform measurements in neutrino physics. BDF/SHiP complements the world-wide program of New Physics searches by exploring a large region of parameter space which cannot be addressed by other experiments, and which will reach several orders of magnitude below existing bounds. The SHiP detector will allow to substantially extend our reach for decays of so called new feebly interaction particles typically related to the dark side of the Universe, such as heavy neutral leptons, dark photons, dark scalars, axion-like particles, light dark matter particles and more. In neutrino physics, the BDF/SHiP facility can perform unprecedented measurements on tau neutrinos and neutrino-induced charm production. The experimental apparatus, physics program of SHiP and the timeline will be discussed.
