1. Particle Physics Seminar

    "Light Sterile Neutrinos: An Experimental Overview"

    Presented by Jonathan Link, Center for Neutrino Physics, Virginia Tech

    Thursday, October 22, 2015, 3 pm
    Small Seminar Room, Bldg. 510

    Hosted by: Elizabeth Worcester

    Persistent, unproven hints of an eV-scale sterile neutrino have been around since the late 1990's, when the LSND signal was shown to be incompatible with the emerging 3-neutrino oscillation framework. More recent results from MiniBooNE and T2K as well as reanalyses of reactor neutrino and gallium source data continue to suggest the possibility of this new physics, but no experiment has been able to definitively demonstrate or for that matter rule out their existence. This talk will review the current state of the sterile neutrino and examine one possible experimental test using a new reactor neutrino detector technology designed to address the particular challenges of a short-baseline reactor neutrino experiment.