HE Seminar
Speaker: John Learned, University of Hawaii
Title: The World's Smallest Neutrino Detector, and Long Range Monitoring with Neutrinos
Host: Bob Svoboda
Room: 416
Abstract:We are building a two liter neutrino detector, called the miniTImeCube, which will measure neutrinos near reactors via the Reines process, inverse beta decay. The detector employs 24x64 very fast pixels with waveform digitization to achieve unprecedented event millimeter
resolution. The signals are streamed via the digital signal processors, and hence backgrounds can be suppressed on the fly. A consequence of the
tiny detector size and online filtering of the data is the lack of need for shielding. The whole package including power supplies, data acquisition and computers fits in a pair of cases which stack to form a module about the size of a single electronics rack, or about one square meter of floor space. We hope to test this device at a reactor in the next few months.
Secondly, I will report on our studies of long range nuclear reactor monitoring via neutrinos. We have done extensive calculations,
including all backgrounds as known from exiting experiments, and including modeling of the geoneutrino background (in 3D). We have
christened our proposed method as NuDAR, since we find that with even a few neutrino events, the energy distribution as modulated by
oscillations, exerts a powerful constraint, even from one detector, while two detectors yields locational solutions. Moreover neutrino
directional resolution in a given detector exerts very powerful constraints. With even modest directionality, and if not too many
distracting reactors in the area, a single detector can get useful range and azimuth. If one knows the reactor location, this can be used to
constrain observation of operation and power. While very large neutrino detectors are required for these purposes, we can foresee a time when a
world network of such detectors can become practical. The spinoffs for particle physics and astrophysics are bountiful.
