The Astroparticle Frontiers seminar series, organised by Astrocent, aims to foster knowledge exchange by bringing together experts in astrophysics, particle physics, and related fields. The seminars will take place on the last Thursday of each month in a hybrid format, with the physical venue being Astrocent at ul. Rektorska 4, 00-614 Warsaw, Poland.
– Seminars frequency: last Thursday of each month (except July, August, and December)
– Format: hybrid (in-person at Astrocent, ul. Rektorska 4, 00-614 Warsaw, Poland & online)
Participants who REGISTER will receive seminar details in advance, including speaker information and access links before each event.
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SEMINAR 1: HOW CAN WE STUDY NEUTRINO PHYSICS WITHOUT NEUTRINOS?
Date: 27 March 2027
Time: 14:00 (CET)
Location: Astrocent, Rektorska 4, room 5.05;
Online participation: zoom
Speaker: Dr. Miroslav Macko
Speaker affiliation: Czech Technical University in Prague
Abstract:
Neutrino physics has gradually gained its importance during the last decades. In last years it became one of the fastest growing fields of particle physics. There are various unanswered and fundamental questions which are crucial to be understood to fully enter the era beyond the Standard Model. We still do not know what the masses of the neutrinos are, what is the nature of the neutrino (Dirac or Majorana) and we also do not know whether the sterile neutrinos exist. These are just some examples of the opened questions in neutrino physics. The mass of the neutrino, for example, can be studied by cosmological observations, very precise measurements of endpoint of beta decay of tritium or by study of Double Beta Decay.
The talk will be dedicated to the search for neutrino-less double-beta decay (0νββ) with SuperNEMO experiment (supernemo.org). The SuperNEMO detector is composed of source foil made of Se-82 (0νββ candidate), tracking detector composed of 2034 drift tubes in Geiger mode and 712 polystyrene scintillators for measurement of energy. This design is unique in the field of 0νββ thanks to the combination of particle tracking with calorimetric methods. Thanks to this, we are capable of reconstructing event topology and to perform particle identification. On top of the summed electron energy spectra, the standard observable in the field, SuperNEMO is capable to measure the angular distributions important for testing theoretical models. The first phase of SuperNEMO project – the demonstrator – is currently in the last phase of commissioning and should start measuring before the summer of 2025.
Young team from IEAP CTU in Prague plays an important role in the development of software for track reconstruction, automatic energy calibration but also in the search for newly proposed exotic modes of the Standard Model allowed two-neutrino double-beta decay (2νββ). The presentation will also be dedicated to a summary of our activities within the collaboration.
