Date/Time
Date(s) - 17/10/2007
3:15 pm - 4:15 pm

Title: The Latest from MiniBooNE

Speaker: Dr. Hirohisa A. Tanaka

Institute: University of British Columbia

Location: ABB 102

Description:

This colloquium reports on the initial results of a search for neutrino oscillations from the MiniBooNE (Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment) Collaboration. The phenomena of neutrino oscillations probes the relationship of the various species of the neutrino family to their mass eigenstates. MiniBooNE was motivated by the results from the LSND experiment which presented evidence for neutrino oscillations with a mass-squared difference of O(1 eV^2/c^4). The confirmation of this evidence would have dramatic implications for particle physics, either in the form of additional neutrino types, or exotic forms of symmetry breaking.

MiniBooNE uses a high-intensity neutrino beam with an average energy of ~800 MeV produced by protons from the Booster accelerator at Fermilab. The detector is
a 800 ton sphere of mineral oil instrumented with 1520 photomultiplier tubes positioned 540 meters from the production target. The results of this analysis use the neutrino-mode data corresponding to 5.6×10^20 protons on target.