VIRTUAL
 
Thursday, February 25th  2021
3:45 – 4:45 p.m.
WEBEX
 
Speaker:  Prof. Rex Tayloe
 
Professor of Physics,
Indiana University-Bloomington
 
 
“More light from coherent neutrino scattering”
 
 
 
Abstract: 
The COHERENT collaboration operates an array of detectors in the ORNL Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) "Neutrino Alley" to search for coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CEvNS) and other low-energy rare scattering processes.  Our goal is to precisely measure CEvNS (and other channels) to further understanding on a wide variety of questions in astro-, particle, and nuclear physics. We observed the world's-first events from CEvNS in 2017 with a cesium-iodide scintillation detector.  We followed up with a measurement on an much lighter argon nucleus, thus confirming the CEvNS hypothesis, that we published in 2020.  Those measurements, including results from an updated cesium-iodide data set, will be presented and explained.  I will also present our plans for future work in neutrino alley and beyond.
 
 
Bio:
Rex Tayloe studied physics at Purdue University and the University of Illinois receiving his PhD in 1995 with studies of hyperons at CERN's Low Energy Antiproton Ring.   He then took a postdoc position at LANL in the P25 group to study neutrinos and oscillations using the LSND experiment.  He then helped design, build, and run the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab that ran from 2002-2019 yielding further insight on neutrino oscillations and interactions.   He then led the effort to install a liquid argon calorimeter for the COHERENT experiment at the ORNL SNS which discovered the CEvNS process in 2017.  His research interests include neutrino oscillations, neutrino-nuclear physics, dark matter, and the technology required for the requisite measurements.