Danielle Norcini (Yale) "PROSPECTing for reactor neutrinos at short baselines"

ABSTRACT:
Experiments at nuclear reactors have played a key role in determining the properties of the weakly-interacting neutrinos. PROSPECT is a next-generation experiment studying reactor neutrinos at very short baselines (< 10m) in an environment with limited shielding from cosmogenic backgrounds. Commissioned in March 2018, the compact, segmented detector unambiguously observed neutrinos in its first 2 hours of operation. In the months following, PROSPECT has performed a world-leading search for “sterile” neutrino oscillations and made the world-leading measurement of the uranium-235 antineutrino energy spectrum. This talk will detail the detector design, construction, and first physics results.