Consolidated Grant New Applicant Scheme (The study of elementary particles and their interactions - ST/N000242/1)

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This is Consolidated Grant (CG)-level support under the New Applicant scheme for Dr Antonin Vacheret as a new member of academic staff at Imperial College London.My research at Imperial focuses on two areas: namely the SoLid and LUX/Zeplin experiments.SoLid is a new ultra-short-baseline reactor neutrino experiment at the SCK CEN BR2 research reactor located in Mol, Belgium. It will make a precision measurement of the electron antineutrino flux and energy spectrum close (5-10m) to a powerful nuclear reactor core. This will allow the 'neutrino anomalies' observed by multiple past and current experiments to be explored in detail. In particular, the interpretation of previous results as evidence for sterile neutrinos will be challenged, with the experiment able to provide exclusion over the entire relevant parameter space. It will also improve the understanding of the reactor flux shape by measuring an almost pure 235U antineutrino flux, a key ingredient of the power reactor antineutrino flux calculation. SoLid is a 'UK experiment'; it was originally proposed and designed by UK physicists. It is now an international collaboration with 50 people from 11 institutes in Europe and the US. SoLid is new at Imperial but I have been the UK-PI since the beginning of the project and I am currently the Spokesperson of the experiment. I am responsible for the construction of two of the five detector modules and the delivery of the electronics and DAQ for the full experiment. A large part of this work will be done at Imperial. Phase One of the SoLid experiment is currently under construction and is planned to start data-taking in early 2017.LUX/Zeplin is the biggest next generation direct dark matter search experiment. It will use seven tonnes of liquid xenon in an attempt to detect faint interactions between galactic dark matter and regular matter. It will be the most sensitive dark matter experiment in the region above 10 GeV WIMP mass. The Imperial College LUX/Zeplin group is already heavily involved in the construction of the experiment. My work will be to take on the organization of the UK data center in preparation for data taking in 2019