VIRTUAL

 

Thursday, October 8th , 2020

3:45 – 4:45 p.m.

WEBEX

Speaker: Daniel Winklehner

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

 

“A High Intensity Cyclotron for Forefront Neutrino Measurements: The IsoDAR Experiment and Beyond”

 

 

 

Abstract: 

 

Recently, we have developed a very compact and cost-effective cyclotron-based driver to produce very high intensity beams. The system will be able to deliver continuous wave (cw) particle beam currents of >10 mA of protons on target in the energy regime around 60 MeV. This is a factor of 4 higher than the current state-of-the-art for cyclotrons and a factor of 10 compared to what is commercially available. All areas of physics that call for high cw currents can greatly benefit from this result; e.g. particle physics, medical isotope production, and energy research.

In this colloquium, I will focus on one example, the IsoDAR experiment, which uses this accelerator to produce a pure electron antineutrino beam to search for oscillations to sterile neutrinos. I will present the sensitivity of such an experiment and the prospects for addressing the hints of sterile neutrino oscillations.  I will also briefly discuss medical isotope production with this machine, and the next steps that will boost the energy to 1 GeV and enable multi-megawatt cyclotrons for neutrino physics and accelerator driven systems.