Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector

The Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) was a scintillation counter at Los Alamos National Laboratory that measured the number of neutrinos being produced by an accelerator neutrino source. The LSND project was created to look for evidence of neutrino oscillation, and its results conflict with the standard model expectation of only three neutrino flavors, when considered in the context of other solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments. Cosmological data bound the mass of the sterile neutrino to ms < 0.26eV (0.44eV) at 95% (99.9%) confidence limit, excluding at high significance the sterile neutrino hypothesis as an explanation of the LSND anomaly.[1] The controversial LSND result was tested by the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab, which refuted a simple 2-neutrino oscillation interpretation of the LSND result.

The detector consisted of a tank filled with 167 tons (50,000 gallons) of mineral oil and 14 pounds of b-PDB (2-(4-tert-butylphenyl)-5-(4-biphenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole) organic scintillator material. Cherenkov light emitted by particle interactions was detected by an array of 1220 photomultiplier tubes. The experiment collected data from 1993 to 1998.

References

^ S. Dodelson, A. Melchiorri, A. Slosar (2006). "Is cosmology compatible with sterile neutrinos?". Physical Review Letters 97: 04301. arXiv:astro-ph/0511500. Bibcode 2006PhRvL..97d1301D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.041301.

Further reading

Athanassopoulos et al. (1997). "The Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector and LAMPF Neutrino Source". Nuclear Instruments and Methods A 388: 149–172. arXiv:nucl-ex/9605002. Bibcode 1997NIMPA.388..149A. doi:10.1016/S0168-9002(96)01155-2.

External links

LSND strengthens evidence for neutrino oscillations
LSND scientific publications
LSND scientific publications, SPIRES database

List of neutrino experiments