Talk Title: “The Nucleus as a Laboratory for Neutrino Physics”
Abstract: The nucleus, whose dynamics are governed by three of the four fundamental forces of nature, provides a unique window into the interactions of elementary particles. Here I will discuss how low-energy nuclear interactions are at the forefront of our efforts to discover beyond-the-Standard-Model physics in the neutrino sector. The first part of the talk will describe the search for neutrinoless double beta decay, a never-before-observed form of radioactive decay that would provide immediate evidence of new physics violating the conservation of lepton number. I will discuss the scientific reach of next-generation experiments and describe our work to extend the sensitivity of xenon-based experiments in new directions. The second part of the talk will discuss searches for new physics using nuclear recoils in low-threshold detectors. Such experiments aim to discover new particles and/or study neutrino interactions via coherent neutrino-nucleus elastic scattering (CEvNS). I will describe neutron scattering measurements that benchmark the sensitivity of liquid xenon detectors to e.g. CEvNS, as well as planned experiments to enhance future searches for heavy sterile neutrinos using radioisotopes implanted into high-resolution cryogenic sensors.
Host: Tyler Johnson