In-Person
  Rosen Auditorium (TA-53, Bldg 0001)
 
Thursday,  Sept. 22,  2022
3:45 – 4:45 pm (MT)
  Light refreshments  3:15 - 3:45 pm
 


 
Webex
https://lanl-us.webex.com/lanl-us/j.php?MTID=m69e70ee814373df888942a5ee4066d47


Speaker: Dr. Ralph Massarczyk
                       Los Alamos National Laboratory (P-1)                  
                    
“Results from the BEST Sterile Neutrino Oscillation Experiment”
 
Abstract: 
 
The Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transitions (BEST) searches for the oscillations between active and sterile neutrinos by exploring the gallium anomaly. Based on the Gallium-Germanium Neutrino Telescope (GGNT) of the SAGE experiment, the BEST setup is comprised of two zones of liquid Ga target to explore neutrino oscillations on the meter scale. Any deficits in the 71Ge production rates in the two zones, as well as the differences between them, would be an indication of nonstandard neutrino properties at this short scale. From July 5th to October 23rd 2019, the two-zone target was exposed to the mainly monoenergetic Cr neutrino source ten times with 20 independent 71Ge extractions from the two Ga targets. The 71Ge decay rates were measured from July 2019 to March 2020 to determine the total production rate from the neutrino source. At the end of the experiment, the counting systems were calibrated using 71Ge isotope data taken in November 2020.  In this talk, I will give an overview of the experiment and the analysis, and discuss the results from the BEST sterile neutrino oscillation experiment.

Bio:

Dr. Massarczyk received his PhD in 2014 from the University of Dresden, Germany, studying dipole strength functions using nuclear resonance fluorescence. He is currently a staff scientist in the Weak Interactions team in the P-1 group at LANL, working on the MAJORANA, BEST and LEGEND experiments and is PI on an LDRD that aims to find the missing tantalum-180m decay using the previous MAJORANA facility.