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The third and final phase of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) experiment utilized a series of 3He proportional counters called Neutral Current Detectors (NCDs) to detect the neutrons produced by the neutral current interactions of solar neutrinos in the detector. The number of neutrons detected by the NCDs, and hence the total flux of 8B solar neutrinos, has been determined using two novel signal extraction techniques which were designed to be robust against potential unexpected behaviour in the NCD background. These techniques yield total 8B solar neutrino flux measurements of 5.04(+0.42-0.40(stat))(+/-0.28(syst))x10E6/cm2/s and (4.40 - 6.43)x10E6/cm2/s, which are in good agreement with previous SNO results and with solar model predictions, and which confirm that previous NCD analyses were not unduly affected by unexpected background behaviour. The majority of the hardware from the now-completed SNO experiment will be reused to create a new liquid scintillator based neutrino experiment called SNO+. An important part of the SNO+ physics program will be a search for neutrinoless double beta decay, carried out by dissolving 150Nd into the scintillator. The sensitivity of the SNO+ experiment to neutrinoless double beta decay has been evaluated. If loaded at 0.1% (w/w) with natural neodymium, after 1 kTa of data taking SNO+ would have a 90%C.L. sensitivity equivalent to a neutrinoless double beta decay half life of 8.0x10E24a or better 50% of the time; if the experiment were run with neodymium enriched to 50% in 150Nd this limit improves to 57x10E24a. Under a reasonable choice for the 150Nd neutrinoless double beta decay matrix element, these half lives correspond to upper limits on the effective Majorana neutrino mass of 112 meV and 42 meV, respectively. These limits are competitive with those expected from all other near-term neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. / Thesis (Ph.D, Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy) -- Queen's University, 2009-09-10 21:07:00.25

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 162-187). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

University, Diss., 2002--Dortmund.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / Timothy A. Bolton / I measure a large set of observables in inclusive charged current muon neutrino scattering on argon with the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber operating at Fermilab. I evaluate three neutrino interaction models based on the widely used GENIE event generator using these observables. The measurement uses a data set consisting of neutrino interactions with a final state muon candidate fully contained within the MicroBooNE detector. These data were collected in 2016 with the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam, which has an average neutrino energy of 800 MeV, using an exposure corresponding to 5e19 protons-on-target. The analysis employs fully automatic event selection and charged particle track reconstruction and uses a data-driven technique to separate neutrino interactions from cosmic ray background events. I find that GENIE models consistently describe the shapes of a large number of kinematic distributions for fixed observed multiplicity, but I show an indication that the observed multiplicity fractions deviate from GENIE expectations.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第23001号 / 理博第4678号 / 新制||理||1671(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科物理学・宇宙物理学専攻 / (主査)教授 中家 剛, 准教授 市川 温子, 准教授 成木 恵 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Le travail de doctorat exposé dans ce manuscrit a été développé dans le cadre du projet LUMINEU, une expérience pilote pour la double désintégration bêta sans émission de neutrinos (0νββ) de l'isotope Mo avec des bolomètres scintillants de ZnMoO₄. Ce travail de physique expérimentale implique l'avancement du design et des tests des prototypes de détecteurs, et le développement des outils en vue de la préparation d'une expérience importante. La méthode de détection adoptée dans cette thèse est la technique bolométrique, qui s'intègre bien avec les caractéristiques requises des détecteurs pour étudier les événements rares. Le détecteur fournit une grande efficacité, une très bonne résolution en énergie et il permet la discrimination des particules pour la suppression du fond. Cette thèse se concentre sur la physique du neutrino et sur la désintégration 0νββ; les méthodes de détection expérimentales et la sensibilité de la demi-vie d'une expérience 0νββ sont traitées.La deuxième partie de ce travail est dédiée au setup, l'acquisition et l'analyse des données sont traitées en détails.La dernière partie de la thèse est consacrée aux résultats : les progrès réalisés dans le détecteurs bolométriques et les mesures sont résumés. Sur la base de ces résultats, nous avons calculé une sensibilité finale sur une expérience à venir basée sur ces détecteurs. / The current experiments on rare events searches for neutrino and dark matter are at present two of the most relevant and exiting field in particle and astro-particle physics.Thanks to the efforts made in the past years, much of progress has been made in answering some big open questions in this field. In particular, experiments in neutrino physics during the past decades gave very interesting results, stimulating new ideas of the mechanisms beyond the Standard Model. One of them is known as neutrinoless double beta decay which can give important informations on the puzzling picture of how nature behaves. It is a rare nuclear transition with a half life longer than 10^25 years where two neutrons decay simultaneously in to two protons with the emission of only two electrons, the two neutrino acting as a virtual particle between the two decay vertices. This process is possible only if the neutrino is equal to its antiparticle, which is in contrast with the SM predictions.The observation of this phenomenon can determining the nature -- Dirac or Majorana --, of massive neutrinos. This is of fundamental importance for making progress in our understanding of the origin of neutrino masses and mixing and of the symmetries governing the lepton sector of particle interactions. The measurement of the half life of the process would give unvaluable information on the absolute scale of neutrino masses, the Majorana phases and the type ofneutrino mass spectrum.This thesis is deeply related to the LUMINEU project aiming to prepare the construction of a next-generation Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay experiment, capable exploring the inverted hierarchy region of neutrino mass. This goal will be achieved through the development of sophisticated low-temperature detectors named bolometers, which may lead to important advancements in the field of dark matter detection as well.Bolometers are low temperature calorimetric detectors, which can exploit the so called homogeneous approach, which provides very high efficiency. They can be made by almost any dielectric material, giving a flexibility in the source/detector material choice. In addition, their excellent energy resolution makes them very competitive detectors.Scintillating bolometers are upgrade of the simple bolometers, where the absorber can also scintillate. The readout of the scintillating light is made by an auxiliary bolometer and it enables particle identification with the only drawback of doubling the readout channels.In this context, we developed, tested and optimized scintillating bolometers and innovative light detectors for a pilot underground experiment on neutrinoless double beta decay of 100Mo embedded in ZnMoO₄ and Li₂MoO₄ crystal scintillators.We demonstrated that the sensitivity of an experiment searching for neutrinoless double beta decay with scintillating bolometers can compete with reach the present forefront technologies in the field.

La thèse de doctorat porte sur la physique des neutrinos de réacteurs. L'étude de plus en plus précise des spectres d'antineutrinos des réacteurs a mis à jour une déviation entre la prédiction et les mesures qui pourrait indiquer l'existence d'un nouveau neutrino, non couplé avec l'interaction faible (un neutrino stérile) et de masse autour de 1 ₑV/c². L'expérience STEREO vise à tester l'hypothèse du neutrino stérile auprès du réacteur ILL de Grenoble. Le principe de STEREO repose sur 6 cellules de détection identiques disposées entre 9 et 11.5 m de distance du cœur du réacteur de recherche de l'ILL. Le détecteur a commencé la prise de données en novembre 2016, et les premiers résultats ont été publiés dès 2018. Le travail effectué pendant la thèse a consisté dans un premier temps à caractériser la réponse en énergie du détecteur. Pendant la première phase de prise de données, des défaillances matérielles se sont manifestées entrainant le découplage optique d'une cellule et une augmentation progressive des fuites de lumière entre cellules. Ces deux aspects ont contraint l'analyse de données à développer un algorithme de reconstruction des dépôts d'énergie qui corrige les fuites lumières au premier ordre. Un important travail sur la mesure des paramètres de cette méthode a été entrepris afin d'assurer que l'échelle en énergie soit bien reproduite dans la simulation GEANT4. L'estimation des incertitudes systématiques sur l'échelle en énergie a été effectuée en se servant des bruits de fond cosmogéniques. Le second aspect majeur abordé pendant la thèse est l'analyse statistique et la génération des contours d'exclusion de l'hypothèse du neutrino stérile. La déduction statistique a été conduite en s'inspirant de la méthode de Feldman et Cousins (1999) sur la génération d'intervalles de confiance fréquentistes. Un formalise en X² a spécialement été développé pour mener une analyse d'oscillations indépendante des prédictions de flux et de forme des spectres antineutrinos. Les erreurs statistiques et systématiques ont été propagées à l'aide de matrices de covariance et les lois de X² ont été calculées en générant des pseudo-expériences. L'ensemble des travaux menés pendant cette thèse de doctorat a contribué à la publication de trois papiers présentant les résultats de l'expérience STEREO. / The doctoral thesis focuses on the physics of reactor neutrinos. The increasingly precise study of antineutrinos spectra from reactors has revealed a deviation between the prediction and the measurements, which could indicate the existence of a new neutrino. This new neutrino state would not couple with the weak interaction (a sterile neutrino) and its mass would be around 1 ₑV/c². The STEREO experiment aims at testing the sterile neutrino hypothesis at the ILL reactor in Grenoble-France. The principle of the STEREO experiment is based on 6 identical detector cells aligned between 9 and 11.5 m distance from the core of the ILL research reactor. The detector started taking data in November 2016, and the first results were published in 2018. The work carried out during the thesis initially consisted in characterizing the detector's energy response. During the first phase of data taking, hardware failures occurred leading to the optical decoupling of a cell and a gradual increase in light cross-talk between cells. These two aspects have compelled data analysis to develop a dedicated energy deposit reconstruction algorithm that corrects first-order light leaks using a matrix formalism. Significant work on the measurement of the parameters of this method was undertaken to ensure that the energy scale was well reproduced in the GEANT4 simulation. The estimation of systematic uncertainties on the energy scale was performed using cosmogenic background events. The second major aspect addressed during the thesis is the statistical analysis and generation of exclusion contours of the sterile neutrino hypothesis. The statistical inference was built using the Feldman and Cousins (1999) method by generating frequentist confidence intervals. A formalization in X² has been specially developed to conduct the oscillation analysis independently of any flux or shape prediction of the antineutrino spectra. Statistical and systematic errors were propagated using covariance matrices and X² laws were constructed by generating pseudo-experiments. All the work carried out during this doctoral thesis contributed to the publication of three papers presenting the results of the STEREO experiment.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第18063号 / 理博第3941号 / 新制||理||1568(附属図書館) / 30921 / 京都大学大学院理学研究科物理学・宇宙物理学専攻 / (主査)教授 中家 剛, 准教授 市川 温子, 教授 鶴 剛 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM