Description:

Emanuela Celi, Postdoctoral Scholar, Figueroa-Feliciano Group

“Hunting Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering with Cryogenic Detectors”

Since its discovery in 2017, interest in Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CENNS) has rapidly increased. CENNS is compelling not only because it offers a valuable approach to exploring physics beyond the Standard Model, but also because its precise measurement provides information for constraining the background in next-generation dark matter experiments.

Cryogenic detectors are excellent candidates for detecting CENNS due to their high sensitivity, which enables the detection of particle interactions at extremely low energy thresholds. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the Ricochet experiment, which aims to perform a precision measurement of the CENNS spectrum by detecting neutrinos from the nuclear reactor at the Institut Laue–Langevin in France. The experiment plans to employ an array of cryogenic thermal detectors using different technologies: Neutron Transmutation Doped (NTD) detectors, currently operational in France, and Transition Edge Sensor (TES) detectors, which are still in the R&D phase.

The increasing push to lower the detection threshold motivates the development of increasingly sensitive sensors. In this context, I will also discuss recent advancements in particle detection using superconducting qubits.

Daniel Wilbern, Postdoctoral Scholar, Velasco Group

"The Fast Beam Conditions Monitor for the CMS Phase-2 Upgrade"

The CMS experiment is one of CERN's flagship experiments, performing precise measurements of the Standard Model of Particle Physics as well as searches for evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model. Most CMS analyses boil down to counting experiments, in which events passing certain criteria are counted and compared to event rates from simulations. Luminosity is the conversion factor from event rate as measured by the detector and the physically-meaningful cross section. CMS's Beam Radiation, Instrumentation, and Luminosity (BRIL) group operates various luminometers in order to precisely measure luminosity in parallel with the main CMS detector subsystems. The Fast Beam Conditions Monitor (BCM1F) is one such luminometer, which works by counting pulses from silicon pad sensors placed near the LHC beam pipe. BCM1F will be succeeded by FBCM during the CMS Phase-2 upgrade, a new silicon pad-based luminometer with several upgrades to improve performance in the high luminoisity LHC (HL-LHC) era. BRIL's target for CMS Phase-2 is 1% uncertainty in the luminoisity measurement, which will be attained by combining data from FBCM and other luminometers.