18-11-2011: Colloquium Patrick Decowski

18 oktober 2011

Friday 18 November 2011, 11:00h, at Nikhef in H331

Speaker: Patrick Decowski (Nikhef/UvA)

Title: Recent Results from KamLAND on Neutrino Properties and Geoneutrinos

Abstract:
As has recently become well-known from news media, Japan uses nuclear power stations to generate much of its electrical power. Apart from generating electricity, these nuclear reactors also produce electron anti-neutrinos in the decay of radioactive products. KamLAND is a large underground neutrino detector located in Japan that measures these electron anti-neutrinos to study neutrino properties. KamLAND has provided strong evidence for neutrino oscillation by seeing the tell-tale distortion in the neutrino spectrum and measuring key neutrino mixing parameters. A secondary goal of KamLAND is to study geologically produced neutrinos, which could provide valuable information about radiogenically produced heat in the Earth’s mantle, a yet unknown quantity. I will describe the physics behind these two goals, the KamLAND experiment and show our recent results, with a special emphasis on our effort to measure the heat emitted by the Earth due to radioactive decays.

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