Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Project

A new experiment is being developed at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, Canada's world-leading neutrino physics facility.  The experiment is called SNO+ and it consists of filling the SNO detector with liquid scintillator after the heavy water currently in SNO is removed in 2007.  By turning SNO into SNO+, a multipurpose experiment with diverse scientific goals would be created.  SNO+ will be able to address fundamental questions in particle physics, in geophysics, and in astrophysics.  SNO+ will start where SNO leaves off and it will stretch our understanding of the neutrino and its impact on the physical universe.A liquid scintillator emits 100 times more light when a neutrino interacts in it compared to a neutrino interaction in water.  This means that SNO+ will be able to detect neutrinos with lower energies.  Lower energy neutrinos from the Sun could be studied.  Separately, antineutrinos from natural radioactivity in the Earth will be observed.  By doing this SNO+ will be able to assay the total amount of radioactivity in the deep Earth.  The fraction of Earth's heat that originates from radioactivity is a fundamental question that could be answered.An extremely rare nuclear decay might be studied in SNO+ by loading neodymium into the liquid scintillator.  Observation of this process, known as neutrinoless double beta decay, would shed light on the fundamental nature of the neutrino with potential impact on our understanding of matter and antimatter in the Universe.SNO+ has been conducting R&D, funded by NSERC since April 2005.  At this point in the development of the project, SNO+ is ready for implementation.  We are ready to move forward with initial construction and continued development and this proposal requests funding to begin converting SNO to SNO+.