Conveners
Session 5
- Matthew Stukel (Queen's University)
- Leon Pickard
Description
10+3 talks
5:00pm ET Start
The SNO+ experiment is a multipurpose neutrino detector located 2 km underground at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Ontario. The goal of the experiment is to search for neutrinoless double beta decay ($0\nu\beta\beta$) in liquid scintillator loaded with $^{130}\text{Te}$ in a low-background environment, thus necessitating the study of radioactive background contaminants. A sound understanding of the...
In this presentation, I will talk about my work simulating gamma ray interactions in a germanium detector. My aim was to determine the dead layer of the germanium detector. In the germanium crystal, there is a layer of lithium ions that extends some distance into the crystal. Any interactions in this layer are inactive and are thus not useful for detection of gamma rays. Calculating the dead...
The radiopurity.org database has proven to be a valuable resource for the low background physics community as a tool to track and share assay results. This talk will describe recent collaborative efforts between SNOLAB and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to modernize the database for the community. The new version includes all features of the original interface, along with additional...
Radon-222 is a naturally occurring radioactive gas originating from the Uranium-238 decay chain. Its presence is problematic in highly sensitive, low-background experiments such as dark matter or neutrino-less double beta decay searches, as it can mask events of interest. To evaluate Radon-222 levels in the SNO+ experiment, volumes from the cover gas system are passed through the radon board,...
Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is an interaction forbidden by the Standard Model because of its lepton-number violating properties. However, if 0νββ was to be observed, the neutrino must be its own anti-particle and the decay would demonstrate lepton number violation. There are several groups searching for this rare decay as it would imply new and exciting physics beyond the Standard...
The purpose of this project is to investigate the structure of spiral galaxies using numerical simulations. We specifically explored the evolution of fundamental galaxy scaling relations, such as the Tully-Fisher relation (TFR), over the lifetime of a galaxy. The TFR is a linear relationship between the baryonic or stellar mass of spiral galaxies and their circular velocity. This project...
