PhD project: Neutrino physics with Short Baseline Neutrino programme

Supervisor: Dr Nicola McConkey

It’s an exciting time for the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Programme at Fermilab! The Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND) construction has recently finished, and by the end of 2023 will be looking at its first data.
SBN is a suite of Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) detectors which will make world-leading measurements of neutrino oscillations over the 1km baseline of a Fermilab(USA)-based neutrino beam. SBN will have the sensitivity to confirm, or definitively refute existing claims of sterile neutrino oscillations, at the level of 5σ.
SBND, as the near detector for this oscillation measurement, will collect an unprecedentedly large number of neutrino interactions on argon, enabling crucial studies of how neutrinos interact with argon.
This project offers the opportunity to become involved in these neutrino cross-section measurements with SBND, and contribute to searches for Beyond Standard Model (BSM) physics searches with SBN, as well as experience working directly with the SBND detector.
During SBND's commissioning and calibration stages you will make important contributions to the tuning and optimisation of the detector. You will then pursue a physics analysis, focussing on measuring an electron-neutrino interaction cross-section. There is the opportunity to spend time based at Fermilab during this crucial and exciting stage of the experiment as part of this project.

For more details please contact n.mcconkey at ucl.ac.uk