Support for the 'Beyond Standard Model Physics with Driven Neutrino Sources' Workshop at MIT

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This award will provide support for the "Beyond Standard Model Physics with Driven Neutrino Sources" workshop. It will be held January 18-19, 2018 on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. The primary intellectual merit of the workshop is in its potential to find a new approach to Beyond Standard Model (BSM) experiments.With respect to benefits to society, this workshop will aid in developing a diverse STEM workforce and encouraging multidisciplinary projects. The plan involves inviting a high fraction of talks by under-represented individuals. Also, the funding will be used to attract graduate students to this event. With respect to the multidisciplinary nature, the workshop will bring together members of the nuclear-, particle-astro-, experimental-particle-, theoretical-particle- and accelerator-physics communities. Funds are provided to support travel for attendees to a workshop that will allow theorists and experimentalists to develop new searches for beyond-Standard-Model (BSM) signatures using driven isotope decay-at-rest sources paired with existing underground detectors. The driven isotope decay-at-rest sources offer high intensity, very pure neutrino flavor sources. A driven source uses an accelerator to produce an isotope which beta-decays-at-rest. This enables the use of fluxes from very short lifetime elements, such as lithium-8. The short lifetime isotopes have relatively high energy endpoints for the flux, typically greater than 10 MeV. No such source has yet been produced, but the availability of such a source would transform the field.