Speaker: Dr. Thierry Lasserre
Date: Thursday, July 14, 2016
Time: 10:00 s.t.
Location: TUM Institute for Advanced Study, Auditorium (ground floor), Lichtenbergstr. 2 a, 85748 Garching
Program:
10:00 Welcome by Prof. Ernst Rank, TUM-IAS Director
10:15 CeSOX and eV-scale sterile neutrinos - Prof. Stefan Schönert
10:40 TRISTAN, keV scale sterile neutrinos, and Dark Matter - Konrad Altenmüller,Doctoral Candidate
11:10 Relic keV neutrino capture on a Dysprosium target - Dr. Thierry Lasserre
11:30 Reception
Abstract:
Neutrinos are neutral leptons at the cutting edge of particle physics. Beyond the Standard Model other types of neutrinos could exist. They would be insensitive to the standard weak interaction and then called sterile neutrinos.
The Sterile Neutrino and Dark Matter TUM-IAS Focus Group investigates phenomenology and experimental perspectives for detecting sterile neutrinos.
Several neutrino experiments reported results that could be interpreted as a hint for a sterile neutrino in the electronvolt mass range. Our focus group is contributing to the CeSOX experiment searching for light sterile neutrinos. In this respect an intense 144Ce-based antineutrino generator will be deployed next to the large Borexino detector located at the Laboratory Nazionali del Gran Sasso.
Nowadays the unidentified nature of the Dark Matter is one of the major open issues in physics. Massive relic sterile neutrinos at the keV mass scale are well-suited candidates to explain the observations. Our focus group addresses the possibility to search for keV sterile neutrinos with an evolution of the KATRIN experiment, by measuring precisely the beta-decay of Tritium. In addition, alternative methods for detecting keV relic neutrinos orbiting in our Galactic halo are also being investigated.
