Particules

RESEARCH THEMES: Neutrino oscillations, mass hierarchy, leptonic CP violation, nucleon decay, solar, atmospheric and supernova neutrinos

 

RESEARCH GROUP in the Laboratory: APC-Neutrino

 

SUBJECT AND NATURE OF PROPOSED WORK: Physics potential of the next generation neutrino observatory. The thesis will cover MC simulations and data analysis based on modern computing approaches like machine-learning as well as R&D work for the future detector.

 

The existence of gravitational effects which do not arise from normal matter is well established; their source is a deep mystery. One possibility motivated by considerations in elementary particle physics is that this “dark matter” consists of undiscovered elementary particles; Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one possibility. Evidence for such WIMPs may come from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN or from sensitive astronomical instruments detecting radiation produced by WIMP-WIMP annihilations in galaxy halos.

ORCA (Oscillation Research with Cosmics in the Abyss) is the low-energy branch of KM3NeT, the next-generation neutrino Cherenkov detector currently being built in the Mediterranean Sea with the aim of measuring the neutrino mass ordering and searching for high-energy cosmic neutrino sources [1]. The ORCA detector will consist of a dense configuration of 115 vertical strings with an horizontal spacing of 20m, anchored on the seabed off the shore of Toulon, France (see figure left). Each string supports 18 digital optical modules with a vertical spacing of 9m.

SUBJECT AND NATURE OF PROPOSED WORK: Physics potential of the next generation neutrino observatory. The thesis will cover MC simulations and data analysis as well as R&D work for the future detector.

Scientific Motivation and Work Proposal: