Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars
Venturing into the neutrino fog
Presented by Ciaran O'Hare (University of Sidney)
The last few years have seen the largest underground dark matter searches rapidly approach their purported ultimate sensitivity limit known as the neutrino floor, or increasingly, "neutrino fog". An experiment reaches the neutrino fog when it becomes so large and so sensitive that the background from the coherent scattering of astrophysical neutrinos begins to masquerade as dark matter, thereby preventing any conclusive identification of a signal. The encroachment of the neutrino fog has driven an increase in interest towards a technique which has the potential to circumvent the limit entirely: directional detection. This technique aims to measure the strongly anisotropic angular distribution of the dark matter wind incident on Earth as we journey around the Milky Way galaxy. Another bonus coming from the ability of directional detectors to "see through" the neutrino fog is that the neutrino background itself becomes an identifiable signal, with the directional capability greatly improving prospects for doing spectroscopy on the different fluxes of solar neutrino. In this talk I will first overview the neutrino fog, before describing how future directional detectors could help facilitate new discoveries in both the context of dark matter as well as neutrinos.
2:00 pm, Tuesday, February 15, 2022
PAIS-3205, PAIS
Individuals with disabilities who need an auxiliary aid or service to attend or participate in P&A events should contact the Physics Department (phone: 505-277-2616, email: physics@unm.edu) well in advance to ensure your needs are accomodated. Event handouts can be provided in alternative accessible formats upon request. Please contact the Physics front office if you need written information in an alternative format.
A schedule of talks within the Department of Physics and Astronomy is available on the P&A web site at http://physics.unm.edu/pandaweb/events/index.php