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A search for time dependence in astrophysical neutrino sources with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

In this thesis I present the results of a periodicity study on the neutrino data collected over the span of the first two phases of SNO, at both low (1 day⁻¹ - 0.1 yr⁻¹) and high (1 day⁻¹ - 0.1 min⁻¹) frequency ranges. The high frequency study is the first of its kind, and is of particular interest in that it opens a window into the detection of solar g-mode oscillations, which have never been conclusively experimentally verified. In a data set with 7,646 neutrino candidates over a period of 698.29 live days, there was no detected high-frequency periodic signal. In addition to a wide-range, single-peak high-frequency search, I have performed a directed-region frequency analysis, and a noise-motivated broad-band analysis. All searches indicate an absence of periodicity in the 8B solar neutrino signal as measured by SNO. I have also carried out an analysis of time dependence in the context of a trigger-less burst search, with the motivation of either observing neutrinos from an optically occluded supernova, or setting an upper limit on the senstitivity of our detector for such an observation. I include discussions of backgrounds to such a search that are specific to a heavy-water Cherenkov detector such as SNO. / text

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/18221
Date08 October 2012
CreatorsAnthony, Aubra Elan
Source SetsUniversity of Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Formatelectronic
RightsCopyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.

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