Search for Neutron Oscillation at Super-Kamiokande

Speaker: Jeffrey Gustafson

When: January 30, 2013 (Wed), 02:30PM to 03:30PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 261

This event is part of the Preliminary Oral Exam.

Examining Committee: Ed Kearns, Robert Carey, Shyamsunder Erramilli, Martin Schmaltz

Observable neutron oscillations provide an interesting and well-motivated window into physics beyond the Standard Model. They violate baryon number, thus making them a good candidate process for baryogenesis. They are also sensitive to a potentially wide range of energy scales, the lower limit of which are beyond those achievable at particle accelerators. I will discuss various physics aspects of this process, as well as its dominant background in the context of a water cherenkov detector, atmospheric neutrino interactions. I will discuss efforts to improve the analysis done by the Super-Kamiokande collaboration for its first data-taking period (April 1996 - July 2001) and show that significant improvements can be made in the signal-to-background ratio, and thereby the oscillation time lower limit, by considering new variables and applying multi-variate techniques. Future analysis prospects are also discussed.