SNO+

Laboratory: SNOLAB

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) has finished taking data. The heavy water that was the target for solar neutrino interactions has been removed and returned to AECL. Nearly all of the equipment for the SNO experiment remains and a follow-up experiment is being constructed. SNO+ is the name of this new experiment and the concept is simple. The acrylic vessel in the SNO detector is going to be filled with liquid scintillator, an organic liquid much like mineral oil that gives off light when charged particles interact in it. The amount of light produced by a scintillator is much larger than the amount of light produced in water. Because of this, SNO+ will be able to study neutrinos of much lower energy than SNO could.

Unlike other liquid scintillator experiments, the SNO+ liquid scintillator will contain dissolved neodymium. This will allow the SNO+ experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay in the 150Nd isotope. Observation of this rare process would answer an important question of whether neutrinos are their own antiparticles or not, and could help to determine the mass of the neutrino.

Just as SNO was, the SNO+ experiment will be located in INCO's Creighton Mine near Sudbury, Ontario. The experiment will take place 6800 feet (2 km) underground in the new SNOLAB facility for particle astrophysics experiments. Within the science program of the new SNOLAB, SNO+ will be able to address interesting and important questions in particle physics, astrophysics and geophysics.