Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems

Date and Time: Monday, 5 October 2020, at 3:00 PM

Venue: Online conference in Zoom

Seminar topic: “Reactor Antineutrino Studies in the DANSS and vGEN Experiments at the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP)”

Speakers: Yu. A. Shitov and A. V. Lubashevsky

Abstract:

Modern reactor antineutrino experiments are relevant to solving a number of problems in fundamental and applied science.
The compact (1 m³) highly segmented (2500 plastic scintillator plates, PSs) neutrino spectrometer DANSS is aimed at searching for oscillations into sterile neutrinos, as well as monitoring the reactor power and nuclear fuel composition. The spectrometer is surrounded by passive (copper, lead, and borated polyethylene) and active (PS-plates against cosmic radiation) shields and is mounted on a mobile platform under the 4th KNPP power unit, thanks to which measurements are carried out at the record-breaking small distances of 10-12 m from the center of the industrial reactor. During 4 years of measurements, almost 4 million reactor antineutrinos were detected (using the IBD method, ~ 1 million events / year, ~ 5000 events / day). The world’s best results obtained searching for oscillations into sterile neutrinos in reactor experiments will be presented at this seminar.
The vGEN experiment is aimed to search for coherent elastic neutrino scattering on nuclei (CEnNS) and neutrino magnetic moment (NMM), respectively. The discovery of the CEnNS process on reactor antineutrinos, allowed within the Standard Model (SM), opens up opportunities for searching for New Physics (NP) beyond the SM in this process, and will also make possible to create compact reactor antineutrino detectors for solving a number of applied tasks. The observation of NMM will unambiguously mean the discovery of NP since this process within the SM is strongly suppressed and inaccessible for measurement at the modern level of technology. To solve both of these problems, special low-threshold (threshold at ~ 200 eV) point-contact low-background HPGe-detectors on a mobile platform are used for measuring at the distance of 10-12 m from the KNPP reactor (experimental conditions are similar to those of the DANSS project). The details of the experimental facility construction and the first measurement results will be presented at this seminar.

(With reference to the prolongation of the DANSS and vGEN projects carried out by JINR at KNPP)

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