International Workshop on Next Generation Nucleon Decay and Neutrino Detectors (NNN18)

Update on the hep solar neutrino limit from the three-phase SNO dataset

1 Nov 2018, 18:00

3m

Room C215 (UBC Robson Square)

poster Poster session and Reception

Speaker

Dr Karin Gilje (University of Alberta)

Description

The spectrum of solar neutrinos from the $pp$ chain has been studied in depth by a variety of underground detectors. However, neutrinos from the $hep$ reaction (${}^3$He $+$ $p^{+}$ $\to$ ${}^4$He $+$ $e^{+}$ + ${\nu }_e$) remain unobserved due to the small theoretical branching ratio ($2\times {10}^{-7}$ per $pp$ termination). The SNO detector has a unique sensitivity to neutrino energies above the ${}^8$B spectrum endpoint (~15 MeV) through the $hep$ spectrum endpoint (~18.8 MeV) due to the charged current interaction on deuterium, which allows a more precise extraction of the underlying neutrino energy spectrum. The SNO collaboration previously published a world-leading limit in 2006 only using the first heavy water phase with 306.4 days of data. An updated status report on the analysis of the $hep$ neutrino spectrum from all three phases of SNO (1170.2 days) will be presented in this poster.

Presentation materials

Slides

Gilje_SNO_hep_speedtalk.pdf