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SEARCH FOR STERILE NEUTRINO OSCILLATIONS WITH THE PROSPECT EXPERIMENT
Title
SEARCH FOR STERILE NEUTRINO OSCILLATIONS WITH THE PROSPECT EXPERIMENT
Creator
Surukuchi, Pranava Teja
Date
2019
Description
Neutrinos have been one of the most interesting particles to study for the best part of the last century. Ever since the first discovery of...
Show moreNeutrinos have been one of the most interesting particles to study for the best part of the last century. Ever since the first discovery of neutrinos, various experiments using both natural and artificial neutrino sources have helped in determining the nature of neutrinos. In particular, experiments in the last two decades helped determine the neutrino oscillation parameters. Although three neutrino picture is well established, discrepancies have been observed in some recent reactor, accelerator, and source neutrino experiments hinting at the existence of a fourth weakly non-interacting neutrino called a sterile neutrino. Additional experimental investigation is needed to test the sterile neutrino hypothesis and identify the source of discrepancies. PROSPECT is a short-baseline reactor antineutrino experiment designed to search for sterile neutrinos and make a precise measurement of 235U reactor antineutrino spectrum from the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory located in Tennessee. The PROSPECT detector is segmented with 6Li-loaded liquid scintillator as the target. The design and development of the PROSPECT detector started in 2014 and the assembly and installation have finished by early 2018. PROSPECT detector has been collecting data since March 2018. The design, development, and installation of the detector is discussed with a particular emphasis on the components designed and developed at Illinois Institute of Technology. The detector calibration, event reconstruction, and data quality are also discussed. Finally, the sterile neutrino search using 33 days of reactor on data and 29 days of reactor off data is presented.
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Impact of powder heterogeneity on particle collection behaviors in a cylindrical electrostatic precipitator
Title
Impact of powder heterogeneity on particle collection behaviors in a cylindrical electrostatic precipitator
Creator
Lee, Eric Monsu
Date
2019
Description
Injection of powdered activated carbon (PAC) upstream of electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) has been the most commonly used strategy for post...
Show moreInjection of powdered activated carbon (PAC) upstream of electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) has been the most commonly used strategy for post-combustion mercury emissions control at coal-fired power plants. However, as PAC injection rate increases, the darkening filters with particulate matter (PM) samples collected downstream of ESPs indicates an unidentified performance anomaly. It has been hypothesized that injection of PAC can introduce unexpected heterogeneity to the PM collection process in ESPs as PAC differs greatly from fly ash in both physical and electrical properties and can potentially pose challenges to ESPs that were initially operated for coal fly ash removal. The present study is carried out by an experimental study and a numerical study. The experimental study centers on the differential collection of PAC-fly ash admixtures and shows increasing trends of unaccounted-for particles as PAC concentration increases in the admixtures. In addition, measurement of powder resistivity of the ESP-collected powder samples infers that the unaccounted-for particles become more PAC-concentrated as PAC concentration becomes higher in the admixtures. The numerical study aims to extract additional variable(s) leading to higher percentage of unaccounted-for particles by using COMSOL Multiphysics. The Euler-Lagrange numerical scheme enables the modeling of the cylindrical ESP used during the experimental study and allows for solving the interrelated physics, including electric field coupled with charge conservation, electro-hydro-dynamics (EHD) fluid velocity field, and particle tracing. The model shows that the induced EHD vortex flow field due to the inhomogeneous current density along the collection electrode can result in continue entrainment of sub-micrometer particles of both fly ash and PAC. The experimental and numerical results provide new understanding for explaining the increasingly darkening PM filters as PAC injection rate increases.
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Energy Scale Study for PROSPECT's Measurement of the Antineutrino Spectrum of 235U
Title
Energy Scale Study for PROSPECT's Measurement of the Antineutrino Spectrum of 235U
Creator
Zhang, Xianyi
Date
2019
Description
Neutrinos from nuclear fission reactors have been widely studied in particle and nuclear physics. In the last ten years, the antineutrino flux...
Show moreNeutrinos from nuclear fission reactors have been widely studied in particle and nuclear physics. In the last ten years, the antineutrino flux and spectrum were measured independently by short baseline reactor experiments. Both flux and spectrum measurements showed discrepancies compared to theoretical models based on historical measurements and nuclear databases. These discrepancies hint at sterile neutrino oscillation at the eV mass scale, as well as an incomplete theoretical model. PROSPECT, the Precision Reactor Oscillation and Spectrum experiment, was built to probe for sterile neutrino oscillations and precisely measure the reactor antineutrino spectrum from a highly 235U enriched reactor. The PROSPECT antineutrino detector is an optically segmented liquid scintillator detector deployed at seven meters to nine meters from the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This dissertation details the analysis to calibrate the energy scale of the PROSPECT antineutrino detector, an essential step for both the oscillation and spectrum measurements. To characterize the nonlinear detector energy response, a unique calibration and analysis strategy was developed to overcome challenges brought on by particle multi-segment scattering within the PROSPECT detector. With the calibrated scale for energy reconstruction, PROSPECT measured of the antineutrino spectrum from a 235U-burning reactor.
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Physics at the MeV-Scale in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers
Title
Physics at the MeV-Scale in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers
Creator
Lepetic, Ivan Thomas
Date
2020
Description
The liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) is the detection technology chosen for several Fermilab-based neutrino experiments. This...
Show moreThe liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) is the detection technology chosen for several Fermilab-based neutrino experiments. This technology will be used in studies of neutrino cross-sections and oscillations, neutrinos from supernovae as well as a variety of studies of beyond the Standard Model physics. This thesis explores the use of these detectors to study MeV-scale activity. MeV-scale electrons arising from Compton scatters of deexcitation photons and photons from inelastic neutron scattering in neutrino-nucleus interactions are reconstructed using novel methods presented here. This work represents the first demonstration of MeV-scale physics capabilities in a LArTPC neutrino experiment as well as the first observation of neutrino-produced photons from nuclear de-excitation and inelastic neutron scattering. A search for millicharged particles, postulated by theories of beyond the standard model physics, is also performed using data from a LArTPC and the low-energy reconstruction techniques developed. The results set world-leading bounds on the parameter space of millicharged particles. The work in this thesis demonstrates that studies of MeV-scale activity and new physics are possible with LArTPC technology and provides the foundation for future LArTPC studies of low energy neutrinos and new physics.
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Quantum Computation for the Understanding of Mass: Simulating Quantum Field Theories
Title
Quantum Computation for the Understanding of Mass: Simulating Quantum Field Theories
Creator
Rivero Ramírez, Pedro
Date
2021
Description
This thesis demonstrates the production of hadron mass on a quantum computer. Working in the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model in 1+1 dimensions and 2...
Show moreThis thesis demonstrates the production of hadron mass on a quantum computer. Working in the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model in 1+1 dimensions and 2 flavors, I show a separation of the contribution of quark masses and interactions to the mass. Along the way I develop a new tool called Quantum Sampling Regression (QSR) that allows for an optimal sampling of low qubit quantum computers when using hybrid variational eigenvalue solving techniques. I demonstrate the regime where QSR dominates the current standard Variational Eigensolver Technique, and benchmark it by improving the calculation of deuteron binding energy. Finally, I developed QRAND — a multiprotocol and multiplatform quantum random number generation framework — in support of the quantum computing community.
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