K40 Backgrounds in the SNO+ Neutrino Detector

Author / Creator

2021 CAP Virtual Congress (2021)

Conferences

2021 CAP Virtual Congress W-POS-J #80-107 Poster session (PPD) / Session d'affiches (PPD) (2021)

Available as

Online

Summary

SNO+ is a neutrino detector located 2 km underground at the deep clean lab facility - SNOLAB, in Vale's Creighton Mine, in Sudbury ON. The primary goal of the SNO+ experiment is to search for an ex...

SNO+ is a neutrino detector located 2 km underground at the deep clean lab facility - SNOLAB, in Vale's Creighton Mine, in Sudbury ON. The primary goal of the SNO+ experiment is to search for an extremely rare, hypothesized phenomenon, neutrino-less double beta decay (0vbb) - the discovery of which will have a multitude of major implications in fundamental physics. Given the rarity of this phenomenon, it is paramount that all backgrounds in the detector be carefully measured and understood. In this poster, I will show the importance of background analysis and detail the method used to find a rate for K40 backgrounds - a signal that is especially difficult to measure. The techniques used in this analysis allowed for the first-ever estimate of the K40 background made directly from data taken with a detector partially filled with liquid organic scintillator.

Show More