12-14 April 2023
Australia/Melbourne timezone

Particle and Nuclear Physics at the MeV scale in Australia

13 Apr 2023, 14:40
20m
Room 1 ()

Room 1

Talk WG2: Detector technology development Room 1 (Laby Theatre)

Speaker

Prof. Martin Sevior (University of Melbourne)

Description

Recently, the ATOMKI group found evidence for a new fundamental boson, named the X17, observed via p+7Li→8Be +(X17→(e+e−)), p+3H→4He +(X17→( e+e−) and )) and p+311B4 +(X17→( e+e−)) reactions with a mass of 17 MeV and significance ≈ 7σ. There are now numerous projects to search for weakly coupled bosons, including the X17, using particle physics experiments . However, only the ATOMKI group have utilized nuclear reactions in a competitive way to date.

We intended to employ the Pelletron accelerator in Melbourne to initiate nuclear reactions of the kind: p+ZX→Z+1Y +( e+e−) and to build a low mass, high precision Time Projection Chamber, (TPC) with world-first capabilities. The invariant mass resolution of the TPC to the (e+e−) final state is expected to be 0.1 MeV. This provides a substantially more sensitive search for anomalous (e+e−) production than any other experiment and 200 times more sensitivity than ATOMKI. Accordingly, we will either observe the ATOMKI anomaly on the Pelletron or exclude it at very high significance. Following this we propose a program to search for anomalous (e+e−) production with world-leading sensitivity in the 5-25 MeV mass region. In addition, the very large acceptance, and excellent angular and energy resolution of the TPC enables qualitatively more sensitive investigations of Nuclear Internal Pair Conversion decays. This capability enables a range of novel Nuclear Physics investigations.

The presentation will describe the proposed TPC, its expected performance together with its application and anticipated impact in particle and nuclear physics investigations.

Speaker's Gender Man
Speaker's Title Prof.
Speaker's Preferred name (if any) Martin
Speaker's Pronouns He/Him
Speaker's Name Martin Sevior

Primary authors

Prof. Martin Sevior (University of Melbourne) Dr Lindsey Bignell (Australian National Univeristy) Dr Catalina Curceanu (INFN (LNF)) Prof. Tibor Kibedi (Australian National University) Prof. David Jamieson (University of Melbourne) Prof. Andrew Stuchbery (Australian National University) Ms Andrea Thamm (University of Melbourne) Prof. Martin White (University of Adelaide)

Presentation Materials

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