SNO+ is a liquid scintillator experiment whose physics goals include measurements of solar neutrinos, reactor anti-neutrinos, geo neutrinos and double beta decay. During an initial water phase, it will also search for invisible modes of nucleon decay. This thesis investigates methods of improving the detector's sensitivity to the baryon and lepton violating processes of neutrinoless double beta decay and invisible nucleon decay. It does this through an improved scintillator model, allowing the sensitivity of the detector with different loading techniques to be evaluated, through a new background rejection technique, capable of increasing the active volume of the detector, and with the development of improved position fitters, achieving resolutions of approximately 10 cm in scintillator and 25 cm in water. The sensitivity of SNO+ to invisible modes of nucleon decay is explored, predicting, after one month of data, a limit of t > 1.38 x 10<sup>30</sup> years on the decay of neutrons and of t > 1.57 x 10<sup>30</sup> years on the decay of protons.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:604461 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Coulter, Ian T. |
| Contributors | Biller, Steve |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:495395b3-bf15-4c9b-851d-c13e7dad8a22 |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds