Speaker
Description
The HUNTER experiment (Heavy Unseen Neutrinos from Total Energy-Momentum) is a laboratory-based search for sterile neutrinos with sensitivity to the 20-280 keV mass range. The sterile neutrino mass will be reconstructed through precise measurement of the energy and momentum of the products in an electron capture decay of 131-Cs to determine the "missing" mass. Two reaction-microscope spectrometers using spatially resolved time-of-flight measurements will reconstruct the charged product kinematics after an x-ray trigger from LYSO scintillators read out by silicon photomultiplier arrays. The experiment requires a low temperature, high efficiency source of 131-Cs atoms, uniform ion extraction electric and electron confinement magnetic fields, a large solid angle for x-ray detection, and precision in-situ alignment. I will discuss our innovative solutions to meet these requirements and give an update on the apparatus development.
- Financial support by the W. M. Keck Foundation and our respective universities is gratefully acknowledged.
