occasional meanderings in physics' brave new world

Name:
Location: New Zealand

Marni D. Sheppeard

## Tuesday, May 27, 2008

### Neutrino08 Day 1c

For a change of topic, we heard from J. Coller on coherent neutrino scattering, which is a Standard Model process not yet measured due to current limitations in detector technology. This group uses cryogenic bolometers and works in the Chicago sewer system! The cross section is the same for all standard neutrinos, so an observation of oscillations would imply the existence of sterile neutrinos. Applications include prospecting, planetary tomography, light WIMP searches and other dark matter phenomenology. DAMA results were also mentioned in a noncommittal yet humorous fashion.

Potzel discussed the antineutrino Mossbauer effect, which is a recoilless resonant emission from decays such as 3H $\rightarrow$ 3He. To achieve minimum recoil one considers situating sources and targets in metallic lattices. For the 3H/3He system it appears possible to achieve recoil free fractions of $f_{(3H)} \cdot f_{(3He)} = 0.07$ at low temperature, but the whole project has the potentially serious problem of lattice contraction and expansion due to different storage volumes for 3H and 3He.

The most charming accent award goes to T. Lasserre, who spoke very rapidly about Double Chooz in France. Supposedly systematic errors for the two 7m x 7m detectors have been reduced to 0.2% for proton count and 0.5% for detector efficiency. Data collection should begin in the next year and after 3 years they hope for at least 0.03 sensitivity in $\textrm{sin}^{2} \theta_{13}$. C. White spoke for Daya Bay and RENO. The Hong Kong experiment, which should be fully operational by 2011, uses 0.1% Gd doped liquid scintillator detectors and aims for an impressive 0.01 sensitivity in $\textrm{sin}^{2} \theta_{13}$.

Exhausted after microphone wallah duty, I desisted from note taking in the pizza and beer session, which started at 6.45pm. This was a long series of brief talks, chaired by the town crier with his bell, associated to posters.

a quantum diaries survivor said...

Hi Kea,

I am curious about the jokes on the DAMA results. In PPC08 it was discussed aplenty. Is there somebody from their collaboration there ? I fear they are not being taken seriously by the science community for two reasons, and one of them is an ugly one...

Cheers,
T.

May 27, 2008 2:03 PM
Kea said...

Hi Tommaso. As far as I'm aware nobody from their collaboration is here, and nobody here is being particularly mean to them - it was just a general joke (Monty Python picture) about experimentalists not giving up!

May 27, 2008 6:49 PM