The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada is the second deepest neutrino detector in the world. With heavy water, SNO demonstrated neutrino flavor change and solved the solar neutrino problem. Art McDonald, the Director of the SNO project, was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Takaaki Kajita (Super-Kamiokande), for the discovery of neutrino oscillations.
With liquid scintillator, SNO+ will keep studying fundamental neutrino properties by searching for neutrino-less double beta decay, measuring other solar neutrino components and antineutrinos from reactors and the Earth as well.
SNO+ has 8400 light sensors overlooking a 6 m radius (5 cm thick) sphere that holds different active media in each phase:
- Water: to characterize the external region
- Scintillator: characterize the internal region
- loaded with Tellurium: for the neutrinoless double beta decay search, after a thorough understanding of the detector (which is accomplished also with relevant physics measurements in the previous phases)
After a succsessful water-phase, SNO+ is being filled with liquid scintillator in 2021.
Our group has several coordination responsibilities in SNO+, namely in the analysis of the water and partial fill phases, optical calibration, backgrounds and anti-neutrino groups.
- Calibration hardware and analysis, to characterize the detector and its response
- Background analysis, fundamental for the neutrinoless double beta decay search
- Anti-neutrino analysis, for neutrino oscillation and geo-neutrino measurements
