Conveners
Plenary: I
- Kate Scholberg (Duke University)
Plenary: II
- Julieta Gruszko (UNC Chapel Hill)
Plenary: III
- Gail McLaughlin
Plenary: IV
- Mary Kidd (Tennessee Technological University)
Plenary: V
- Amy Nicholson (UNC Chapel Hill)
Plenary: VI
- Reyco Henning
Plenary: VII
- Matthew Green (NCSU)
Plenary: VIII
- Jonathan Engel (University of North Carolina)
Plenary: IX
- Julieta Gruszko (UNC Chapel Hill)
Plenary: X
- Jonathan Engel (University of North Carolina)
Next-generation experiments are poised to explore lepton-number violation, discern the neutrino
mass hierarchy, understand the particle nature of dark matter, and answer other fundamental
questions aimed at testing the validity and extent of the Standard Model. Nuclei are used for
these high-precision tests of the Standard Model and for searches of physics Beyond the
Standard Model....
The long-baseline neutrino experiments continue to provide precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters by searching for the appearance of electron (anti)neutrinos and the disappearance of muon (anti)neutrinos in a beam of muon (anti)neutrinos. However, fundamental questions such as the neutrino mass ordering and the charge-parity violation in neutrinos still remain unknown.
In...
Long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments are sensitive to the parameters governing nu_1-nu_3 and nu_2-nu_3 mixing, including the neutrino mass ordering and a potentially CP violating phase in the PMNS matrix. These measurements are of particular interest because observation of CP violation in the lepton sector could be an important step in understanding the origin of the baryon asymmetry...
Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a medium-baseline reactor neutrino experiment currently under construction in Jiangmen City in South China. The central detector (CD) is a 20 kton liquid scintillator (LS) neutrino target housed in an acrylic sphere of 35.4m in diameter, submersed in a cylindrical water Cherenkov veto detector of 43.5m in diameter and depth. The JUNO...
I provide an overview of sterile neutrinos, including motivations - why do we think they exist and what are they good for - and current constraints/hints.
In this talk I will review our current theoretical understanding of the dynamics of neutron star mergers, focusing on the impact of the dense matter equation of state and of neutrino radiation. I will discuss the current progress and future potential of multi-messenger observations to constrain the properties of extreme matter and the r-process nucleosynthesis yields of mergers. Finally, I...
We can't understand core-collapse supernovae without understanding neutrinos, but we can't understand neutrinos without understanding core-collapse supernovae. What to do? I discuss new ways forward.
The fundamental nature of dark matter and neutrinos affect our Universe in ways that we can probe through its evolution over cosmic scales of distance and time. From precision measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation at the start of the 21st century through to the first sets of precision weak lensing measurements almost twenty years later, we are pursuing a rapidly expanding...
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a powerful tool for understanding cosmology and particle physics. At large angular scales, the CMB images the primordial universe providing a window into physics that preceded the hot radiation-dominated era. The CMB also images acoustic oscillations in our early universe exquisitely tracing our thermal history and the corresponding evolution of our...
Cosmological observations conclusively tell us two things about dark matter: it composes 26% of the current energy density of the Universe, and it lies beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. These inferences rely exclusively on dark matter's gravitational influence; all other efforts to detect dark matter have only constrained its interactions with the Standard Model. Fortunately, dark...
In this talk I will review the current experimental status of dark matter searches in the MeV scale. Will describe the existing technologies probing this regime using electron recoil and discuss prospects for future projects.
Dark matter detection experiments are closing in on sensitivity to astrophysical neutrinos from the Sun and the atmosphere. I will discuss the prospects for detecting these neutrinos, and for using this detection to extract information on the properties of neutrinos and their sources. I will discuss methods that can be used to differentiate neutrino from dark matter signals.
Noble liquids are important target mediums for detecting neutrino interactions and searching for dark matter, thanks to their abundant scintillation and ionization yields, particle identification capabilities and availability in large quantities. Large 100-ton scale liquid argon (LAr) detectors were built and massive kiloton scale detectors are planned for detecting accelerator-produced...
We discuss the application of chiral effective field theory (EFT) to the calculation of nuclear responses for the scattering of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) off nuclear targets. A consistent interpretation of the limits set by current and future direct-detection searches in terms of the WIMP parameter space requires the use of a series of EFTs to bridge the gap between the...
The dark matter direct detection landscape continues to shift, as solid-state detectors become ever more sensitive to minute depositions of energy. New synergies with quantum information science have broadened interest in the detectors themselves and created new collaborations. The next generation of solid-state detectors are forecasted to probe many square decades of unexplored dark matter...
I will describe what the fundamental, particle nature of the dark matter could possibly consist of and I will give an overview of strategies to search for dark matter as a particle, describe a few examples of possible hints of discovery, and outline ways forward in this exciting hunt.
The particle nature of dark matter remains one of the great open questions in physics. The axion has had a renaissance as a dark matter candidate as theoretical studies have improved our understanding of axion cosmology and advances in quantum sensing and cryogenics have opened new opportunities for detection. In this talk, I will review the physics of the axion, its cosmology and the...
I will give a review on recent progress of lattice QCD studies relevant for neutrino physics and dark matter searches.
We still do not know if the neutrino is a Majorana or a Dirac particle, i.e. if the neutrino is its own antiparticle or not. Also the absolute mass scale of the neutrino is unknown, only the relative scale is known from the neutrino-oscillation experiments. These unknown features of the neutrino can be
tackled by experiments trying to detect the neutrinoless double beta ($0\nu\beta\beta$)...
The search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0nubb) is the most sensitive known way to test for the Majorana nature of the neutrino. Observation of this process would confirm the neutrino to be its own antiparticle, a property with profound implications for particle physics and cosmology. If 0nubb it exists, however, it surely has a half life in excess of 10^26 yr, and perhaps even longer...
Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ-decay) is an important probe to study fundamental neutrino properties, e.g., Majorana nature, neutrino masses, CP phases, and non-standard neutrino interactions. The 0νββ-decay nuclear matrix elements (NMEs) are crucial for extracting the neutrino properties from the experimental transition rate. They can not be measured separately but must be evaluated...
KamLAND-Zen is searching for neutrinoless double-beta (0νββ) decay in Xe-136 using a xenon-loaded liquid scintillator. The KamLAND-Zen detector was recently upgraded with almost double the amount of xenon and an ultra-low radioactivity container. With almost 1-ton-year of $^{136}$Xe exposure, we are exploring the double-beta decay parameter space corresponding to the inverted hierarchy for...
Neutrinoless double beta decay (0nbb) experiments are the strongest probe of lepton number violation (LNV). While an observation of 0nbb will indicate that neutrinos are Majorana particles and will have profound implications on several open problems in particle physics, from the origin of neutrino masses to the generation of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe, the present and next...
Breakthroughs in our treatment of the many-body problem and nuclear forces are rapidly transforming modern nuclear theory into a true first-principles discipline. This allows us to address some of the most exciting questions at the frontiers of nuclear structure and physics beyond the standard model, such as the nature of dark matter and neutrino masses, as well as searches for violations of...
Dark matter particles could be unstable and decay, annihilate with each other, or subtly alter the processes within stellar interiors, imprinting characteristic signals in cosmic-ray and multi-wavelength observations. The central challenge is to distinguish these signatures from similar spectra produced by standard astrophysical processes, such as the life and death of stars and the...
Theories of light sub-GeV dark matter and dark sectors are well-motivated and are being pursued on a variety of experimental fronts. Accelerator experiments utilizing intense and energetic proton or lepton beams play a crucial role in this effort. In this talk, I will highlight the exciting opportunities to search for dark matter using fixed target and collider experiments, including...
We have entered a new era in astroparticle physics with the discovery of astrophysical, energetic neutrinos. Neutrinos, because they can travel nearly the entire universe undeflected and unimpeded, provide a new window into the non-thermal universe, one which we are only just beginning to reveal with the multi-messenger associations of neutrinos with blazers and tidal disruption events....
Coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) means that a neutrino interacts with a nucleus as a whole, which enhances the cross section compared to other neutrino interactions. CE$\nu$NS is e.g. relevant in the modeling of Super Nova explosions and results in an inevitable background for dark matter experiments. It also opens up unique possibilities to search for BSM physics....
Enrico Fermi's 1934 paper, proposing the original weak-interation theory of beta decay, pointed out that the neutrino's mass would leave a signature in the endpoint of beta decay. 88 years later, the beta-decay endpoint remains our best source of neutrino-mass constraints. Better and better spectroscopy of the 18.6 keV endpoint of tritium has, for the past 30 years, provided the...