Constraining the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with SK-Gd

用 SK-Gd 约束漫射超新星中微子背景

• 批准号: 2275187
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2275187
• 关键词: Constraining; Diffuse; Supernova; Neutrino; Background

The main aim of the research programme will be enhancing the capability of existing and future water Cerenkov detectors (in particular the existing Super Kamiokande experiment and the planned Hyper Kamiokande experiment). There are two principle themes of the research. The first is a hardware/software project to develop a variant of existing photodetectors proposed by Oxford and the Rutherford Lab. These new photodetectors will consist of photomultipliers with attached wavelength shifting plastic plates. This is a technique already used in the field, but the new proposal is to alter the geometry of the WS plates to optimize the timing response of the resulting system. We believe this will produce a cheaper alternative to existing photomultiplier options that could be used to enhance the low-energy physics of the Hyper Kamiokande experiment. The project will consist of designing, building, and testing the first working prototypes of these new detectors. The main aim is to demonstrate that a cost-effective device can be built with high enough photon detection efficiency and good timing. This will be done in collaboration with a number of UK and foreign universities, and a possible outgrowth would be to develop a new type of wavelength-shifting plastic (because the existing alternatives seem unnecessarily expensive) which could be licensed to a UK firm to produce. The second theme of the research project will be to use the newly added neutron-detection capability of Super Kamiokande to improve the physics sensitivity to oscillations or proton decay (enhanced neutron-detection capability will help both by suppressing background in proton decay searches and by enabling statistical separation of neutrino from anti-neutrino events in oscillation searches). This will be primarily a software analysis task, also performed in collaboration with other university groups.

该研究计划的主要目标是增强现有和未来水切伦科夫探测器的能力（特别是现有的超级神冈实验和计划中的超级神冈实验）。该研究有两个主要主题。第一个是牛津大学和卢瑟福实验室提出的硬件/软件项目，旨在开发现有光电探测器的变体。这些新型光电探测器将由带有波长移动塑料板的光电倍增器组成。这是一种已经在现场使用的技术，但新的建议是改变 WS 板的几何形状，以优化所得系统的定时响应。我们相信这将产生一种比现有光电倍增管更便宜的替代方案，可用于增强超级神冈实验的低能物理。该项目将包括设计、建造和测试这些新探测器的第一个工作原型。主要目的是证明可以构建具有足够高的光子探测效率和良好定时的经济高效的设备。这将与许多英国和外国大学合作完成，可能的成果是开发一种新型的波长转换塑料（因为现有的替代品似乎过于昂贵），该塑料可以授权给一家英国公司生产。该研究项目的第二个主题将是利用超级神冈探测器新增加的中子探测能力来提高对振荡或质子衰变的物理敏感性（增强的中子探测能力将有助于抑制质子衰变搜索中的背景以及在振荡搜索中实现中微子与反中微子事件的统计分离）。这主要是一项软件分析任务，也与其他大学团体合作执行。