Search for Very-Short Baseline Neutrino Oscillation with the SoLid experiment @ BR2 (SCK-CEN)

11h00 – GANIL seminar room (105)

A coffee will be served 15mn before.

For several years now, neutrino community has been facing three experimental anomalies which does not fit with the three flavor scheme of the standard model of particle physics: \bar{\nu}_e appearance in the  beam in the LSND/MiniBooNE experiments, \nu_e deficit in calibration runs with radioactive sources in the solar neutrino experiments SAGE and GALEX and \bar{\nu}_e flux deficit in reactor experiments (RAA). All these three anomalies may be resolved by the existence of a sterile neutrino family with a mass square difference around of 1 eV^2. Besides, recent \theta_{13} precision measurements near reactor are all indicating a deviation in the \bar{\nu}_e energy spectrum shape, from 5 and 6 MeV. It is

likely related to nuclear and reactor physics and thus put the \bar{\nu}_e flux prediction and its uncertainties estimation into question.

In this context, the SoLiD project developed a new technology of neutrino detection which has been deployed, beginning 2018, near the BR2 research reactor core (SCK-CEN, Mol, Belgium). First, it will allow to improve signicantly the knowledge of neutrino ‑flux from 235U fission. Then, it will allow to perform a rate/shape oscillation analysis, independently from the reactor ‑flux model at a very short distance, in order to test, in fine, the hypothesis of the fourth sterile ‑flavor. In this seminar I will review the experimental layout and preliminary results from the SoLid detector. I will conclude this seminar, with an overview of the timeline and a brief discussion of other competitive efforts world-wide.