APEC Seminar (Astronomy - Particle Physics - Experimental Physics - Cosmology)

Speaker: Rupak Mahapatra (Texas A&M University )
Title: Searches for New Physics through Dark Matter and Coherent Neutrino Interactions
Date (JST): Wed, May 24, 2023, 10:30 - 12:00
Place: Hybrid
Abstract: Direct detection of Dark Matter WIMP is challenging due to the very small energy deposition from rare recoils on terrestrial detectors, compounded by dominant radioactive background. Our group has developed low-threshold, large-mass cryogenic semiconductor (Germanium and Silicon) detector technologies that will provide unprecedented low mass (1-10 GeV) Dark Matter search capabilities to the SuperCDMS experiment at SNOLAB.
Such detector innovations are providing means to access a whole new frontier of precision neutrino experiments. Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor (MINER) is anongoing experiment at Texas A&M TRIGA nuclear reactor. MINER aims to be the first experiment to detect coherent scattering of weakly interacting reactor neutrinos, the same process that governs Dark Matter scattering, with same low threshold challenges. Such precision measurements may hold the key to discover “New Physics” beyond the Standard Model.
I will also discuss new exciting Detector R&D being carried out that may open the door to search for an even broader set of physics enabled by sub-eV recoil thresholds using novel detector ideas like Magnetic Avalanche Detector using Single-Molecule Magnets (SMM).
Remarks: Seminar room A & Zoom