Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Project

SNO+ is the follow-up experiment to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO). With a liquid scintillator in place of the heavy water that was in SNO, a multipurpose experiment with diverse scientific goals is being built. SNO+ will be able to address fundamental questions in particle physics, in geosciences, and in astrophysics. SNO+ will start where SNO leaves off and it will expand 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 than SNO. Lower energy neutrinos from the Sun will be studied to shed light on the properties of neutrinos and the energy generation processes in stars. Separately, antineutrinos from natural radioactivity in the Earth will be detected by SNO+. The number of ""geo-neutrinos"" observed is related to the total amount of uranium and thorium radioactivity in the deep Earth. The fraction of Earth's heat that originates from radioactivity is a fundamental question that could be answered by measuring geo-neutrinos. An extremely rare nuclear decay will be studied in SNO+ by dissolving neodymium in 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+ received full infrastructure (capital) funding in the 2009 CFI competition. We are ready to begin capital construction. This proposal requests funds to support SNO+ research activities at Queen's, Alberta, Laurentian, SNOLAB and TRIUMF. These activities include construction, preparation for commissioning of the detector and the start of data taking two years from now.