Piecing together the Neutrino Mass Puzzle in Search of New Particles with Precision Oscillation Experiments and Quantum Technologies

通过精密振荡实验和量子技术拼凑中微子质量难题以寻找新粒子

• 批准号: ST/W003880/2
• 负责人: Nicola McConkey
• 金额: $ 55万
• 依托单位: Queen Mary University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ST%2FW003880%2F2
• 关键词: Piecing; together; Neutrino; Mass; Puzzle

Neutrino physics has the potential to revolutionise our current understanding of the universe.The elusive neutrino is the most abundant massive particle in nature, but one of the most tricky to measure, because of its interaction properties. One hundred trillion neutrinos from the sun are passing through your body every second, but the chance of them actually stopping is incredibly small; if you lived to be one quadrillion years old, it's possible one may stop inside during your lifetime. Over the past five decades, neutrino experiments have overcome this challenge by developing new detector and particle beam technologies, however, in this relatively modern field, many properties and interactions of the neutrino remain shrouded in mystery. One puzzle is the ever-increasing number of hints that there may be more neutrinos than the three we have already discovered. Does a fourth "sterile" neutrino, exist? Could it be Dark Matter? My passion is to develop novel technology which allows me to make more precise measurements than ever before of neutrinos, to answer these questions. As a research fellow, I will use the first data from the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) programme: an innovative system of detectors that I spent the past seven years building, to investigate a phenomenon called neutrino oscillations. Measuring this process gives us an opportunity to probe the existence of new kinds of neutrino. Using these state-of-the-art neutrino detectors, called liquid argon Time Projection Chambers, I will measure neutrino interactions, and lead a search for sterile neutrinos with SBN.More clues can be found in a complementary search: measuring the mass of neutrinos. In the radioactive decay of tritium, an electron and a neutrino are emitted. Using what we know about the masses of the three known neutrinos, I will use energy conservation to look for evidence of a fourth.Directly measuring the neutrino mass is extremely challenging. Even though the neutrino is the most abundant massive particle in the universe, we can't precisely say what its mass is. My goal is to combine quantum measurement techniques with an emerging technology called Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy, to create a detector which can measure the neutrino mass with unprecedented precision. Current detector technologies are unable to directly measure the absolute mass of the neutrino, but this project will lay groundwork for the ultimate future experiment: solving the neutrino mass puzzle by direct measurement.

中微子物理学有可能彻底改变我们目前对宇宙的理解。难以捉摸的中微子是自然界中最丰富的质量粒子，但由于它的相互作用性质，它是最难测量的粒子之一。来自太阳的100万亿个中微子每秒都在穿过你的身体，但它们真正停止的可能性非常小；如果你活到一千万亿岁，那么有一个中微子可能会在你的有生之年停下来。在过去的五十年里，中微子实验通过开发新的探测器和粒子束技术克服了这一挑战，然而，在这个相对现代的领域，中微子的许多性质和相互作用仍然笼罩在神秘之中。一个谜团是，越来越多的迹象表明，可能存在比我们已经发现的三个中微子更多的中微子。是否存在第四个“无菌”中微子？会不会是暗物质？我的热情是开发新的技术，使我能够对中微子进行比以往任何时候都更精确的测量，以回答这些问题。作为一名研究员，我将使用短基线中微子计划(SBN)的第一批数据，该计划是我花了七年时间建立的一个创新的探测器系统，以研究一种名为中微子振荡的现象。测量这一过程使我们有机会探索新类型中微子的存在。使用这些最先进的中微子探测器，被称为液体Ar时间投影室，我将测量中微子之间的相互作用，并领导对SBN的不育中微子的搜索。更多线索可以在一个补充搜索中找到：测量中微子的质量。在氚的放射性衰变中，发射一个电子和一个中微子。利用我们已知的三个已知中微子的质量，我将利用能量守恒来寻找第四个中微子的证据。直接测量中微子的质量是极具挑战性的。即使中微子是宇宙中最丰富的质量粒子，我们也不能准确地说出它的质量是多少。我的目标是将量子测量技术与一项名为回旋辐射发射光谱的新兴技术相结合，创造出一种能够以前所未有的精度测量中微子质量的探测器。目前的探测器技术无法直接测量中微子的绝对质量，但这一项目将为未来的最终实验奠定基础：通过直接测量来解决中微子质量之谜。