Neutrinos are one of the most fascinating particles that occur in nature. Hundreds of millions of times smaller than the proton, the neutrino was once thought to be massless and to travel at the speed of light. Huge strides have been made in our understanding of neutrinos in past decades, with the resolution of the solar neutrino problem providing clear evidence of neutrino oscillation and, thus, a non-zero neutrino mass – a Nobel-Prize winning discovery. This has allowed us to move beyond basic questions to a precision era, in which we can study detailed properties of these fundamental particles. This talk will introduce the SNO+ experiment, which will seek to resolve the very nature of the neutrino: is it unique among fermions as being its own antiparticle? We will then discuss future prospects for the field, including exciting new technological developments that could permit a new kind of neutrino experiment, with a broad experimental program and wide physics reach.
Gabriel Orebi Gann attended the University of Cambridge in the UK from 2000 to 2004, where she received her BA and MSci in Natural Sciences. She went on to the University of Oxford, and was awarded her DPhil in Particle and Nuclear Physics in 2008. Her post-doctoral research was performed at the University of Pennsylvania, in Professor Klein’s research group, working on SNO and its successor, the SNO+ experiment. Gabriel joined the U.C. Berkeley faculty in 2012.
