Prof. Mark Vagins received his B.S. from the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in particle physics from Yale University. He is now a tenured professor at the University of Tokyo's Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, with a joint appointment at the University of California, Irvine, and is one of the central participants in the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan. He is also the co-spokesperson for the US/UK nuclear non-proliferation project called WATCHMAN. When not hunting supernova and reactor anti-neutrinos, he enjoys scuba diving, flying ultra-light aircraft, zip-lining through jungles, walking across active lava fields, eating raw pufferfish, loitering in high radiation areas, child rearing, public speaking, and other life-threatening activities.
GADZOOKS! Supernova Neutrinos Without The Annoying Wait
May 17, 2018
When: May 17, 2018 3:30PM
Mark Vagins
University of California, Irvine
Water Cherenkov detectors have been used for many years to study neutrino interactions and search for nucleon decays. Super-Kamiokande, at 50 kilotons the largest such underground detector in the world, has itself enjoyed over two decades of interesting and important physics results, including the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of neutrino oscillations. Looking to the future, for the last fifteen years extensive R&D on a potential upgrade to the detector known as GADZOOKS! has been underway and is now complete; the project has been formally approved, and the detector will be prepared for Gd loading starting this summer. The benefits and challenges of enriching Super-K with 100,000 kilograms of a water-soluble gadolinium compound - thereby enabling it to detect thermal neutrons and dramatically improving its performance as a detector for supernova neutrinos, reactor neutrinos, atmospheric neutrinos, and also as a target for the T2K long-baseline neutrino experiment - will be discussed.
Mark Vagins