Description:

Title: SuperNEMO and the mystery of matter

Speaker: Cheryl Patrick, University College London
 

Abstract: Why does the universe exist? Or rather - how did we end up with a universe made of matter, when matter and antimatter are created together? The SuperNEMO experiment is hoping to find some clues to this puzzle, by looking for neutrinoless double-beta decay. If this decay exists, it has a half-life billions of times longer than the age of the universe - and it creates matter without antimatter, giving us a possible mechanism for the matter-antimatter asymmetry. I will introduce your to our detector, under construction in the Modane tunnel in the French Alps, and explain how we will use our unique tracker-calorimeter architecture to make ultra-low background measurements of the double-beta decay rate and look for the elusive neutrinoless decay.

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, HEP