Particle and Astroparticle Physics Seminars

Water Cherenkov Neutrino Detectors for the 21st Century

Hiro Tanaka

Univerisity of Toronto

The venerable water Cherenkov technique has been at the heart of several key discoveries in neutrino physics, including both experiments (the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and Super-Kamiokande) recognized by the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. I will review some recent developments in neutrino physics, along with prospects for the future, which include the search for neutrino/antineutrino asymmetries arising from CP violation and matter effects in neutrinos. These future endeavours may utilize new enhancements to the water Cherenkov technique such as the ‘multi-PMT’, which may improve the performance of these detectors with enhanced granularity and directional information, and ‘NuPRISM’, a new technique to exploit the variation of neutrino energy as one moves away from the axis of an accelerator-based neutrino beam.