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New measurements of neutron interactions relevant to neutrinoless double beta decay

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Thursday, June 14, 2018
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Josh Albert

Since the earliest measurements of neutrinos, neutron interactions
have been an important part of the detection process. This talk will
focus on the search for neutrinoless double beta decay, which has the
potential to determine the Dirac/Majorana nature of the neutrino. In
particular, the EXO-200 and nEXO experiments will be highlighted. Two
techniques for improving the experimental analysis using neutron
interactions will be described. First, the backgrounds from
cosmogenic neutrons in EXO-200 have been studied in detail, leading to
a technique to use neutron capture signals to reject these backgrounds
from future data, improving sensitivity. Second, neutron inelastic
scattering may be used to calibrate a future large xenon detector such
as nEXO. This novel technique offers advantages over traditional
external gamma source calibration. Both of these techniques have had
recent supporting measurements made at the Los Alamos Neutron Science
Center, and updated results will be presented.

Contact: Kate Scholberg