Seminar

Neutrinos and reactors

On 27 December, a lecture "Neutrino physics on reactors" was presented by DLNP Director E.A.Yakushev at FLNP seminar.

"The title of my report is quite symbolic," Evgeny Alexandrovich began. "More than half of the research at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems is related to neutrino physics and the main instrument of your laboratory is the reactor. Why is it interesting to study neutrinos? This is one of the most common particles in the Universe, comparable in abundance to photons. And reactors are the best sources of neutrinos on Earth."

The speaker touched upon the history of the issue, recalling that the main technique for studying reactor neutrinos, the β-process was proposed in 1946 by Bruno Pontecorvo during his work in Canada. He also indicated the main sources of neutrinos and antineutrinos - the Sun and reactors. In 1977, the initiative passed to Soviet physicists. L.A.Mikaelyan expressed the idea: neutrinos can be used to monitor reactors. The idea was implemented on the reactor under construction in Rivne, the first result was obtained in 1984. The collapse of the USSR interrupted these experiments. At the same time, solar neutrinos were studied and by the end of the 1980s, the question arose: do we understand how the Sun works?

And afterwards, the speaker presented some basic neutrino experiments on reactors, the latest results obtained by JINR physicists. In particular, unprecedented precision of reactor monitoring at the percent level was achieved using inverse β-processes induced by reactor antineutrinos in the DANSS experiment at the Kalinin NPP. At present, the detector at the Kalinin NPP is modernized by JINR and FIAN, its resolution currently improves.

The tasks of future research, including the investigation of coherent scattering of neutrinos on nuclei, the goal of which is to search for New Physics beyond the Standard Model with the highest accuracy were also discussed in the report.

The report aroused great interest among the FLNP and FLNR staff members taking part in the seminar.

Olga TARANTINA