First direct detection of neutrinos at the LHC by the FASER-nu experiment
sciencenews.org/article/neutrinos-detection-l...
sciencenews.orgPosted May 27, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC
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sciencenews.orgarXiv link from a couple weeks ago. I don't think this has been posted already, but apologies if it has.
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Does this mean we'll soon be able to detect them without a thousand ton tank of water?
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[deleted]
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That's just part of it! The interaction probability (or cross section) for neutrinos grows with energy. Since FASER's neutrinos are up there in the TeV-scales, or 1000s of times the rest-mass-energy of a proton, the chance of interacting for a neutrino here is ~100,000 times higher than what it'd be for neutrinos at the energies in reactor experiments (MeV-scales)!
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That already exists. Short baseline neutrino oscillation experiments have to use small detectors.
PROSPECT uses a 4 ton detector volume. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.251802
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There will always be a need for the huge detectors! FASER looks at high-energy neutrinos (for nus, high-energy=more interact-ability), and there are a lot of them, so it can get away with being smaller. It's hoping to make very specific measurements about how often the neutrino likes to interact and in what ways.
Detectors studying astrophysical neutrinos will always need to be pretty dang big since there are so few neutrinos coming in from space. And reactor-sourced neutrino detectors (like what you've seen with the big water tanks) will usually need to be a similar size! These are built to study some of the more exotic properties of neutrinos (neutrino oscillations, mass ordering, and more!)
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Yes, this uses tungsten plates and film to capture them and is relatively compact.
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Might sound a silly question, how do they speed up the particles in the collider?
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Not a silly question at all! In short, they use powerful magnets to accelerate bunches of protons. You can read more about it on CERN's website.
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FASER-nu sounds like a Superhero or covert weapons programme
Interesting stuff though for sure
It can join the team of superhero physics expeiments: Atlas - a flying brick kind of guy. Super kamiokande - an enormous robot piloted by a nerdy japnese teenager. Ligo - a police dog. Advanced Ligo - after being run over by the bad guys, reconstructed as a cyborg police dog. Ice Cube - has a freezing ray, also can rap.
Belle II: An evil genius (Belle) cloned herself, and included upgrades. Her clone Belle II then killed her and took her place to gain power and influence.
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