Let there be light: unlocking the mysteries of the Universe with neutrinos

by Prof. Gabrial Orebi Gann (UC Berkeley)

Tuesday May 13, 2025, 12:30 PM → 2:30 PM America/Los_Angeles

48/2-224 - Madrone (SLAC)

Neutrinos are some of the most fascinating particles that occur in nature. Over one billion times lighter than the proton, the neutrino was once thought to be massless and to travel at the speed of light.  The Nobel-Prize winning discovery of neutrino oscillations demonstrated that neutrinos have non-zero mass, which opens up the unique possibility of the neutrino being its own antiparticle, known as a Majorana fermion.  This talk will discuss the physics landscape, and present recent technological advances that enable a new kind of “hybrid” neutrino experiment, which would combine two highly successful detection techniques: the topological information of Cherenkov detectors, with the high light yield of scintillators. The Theia detector would be capable of combining both signals to achieve unprecedented levels of particle and event identification, offering a rich program of science across high-energy particle, nuclear and astrophysics. If deployed as one of the “modules of opportunity” at the DUNE far site, Theia could offer insights into both CP violation, and the search for Majorana neutrinos: the two ingredients necessary to shed light on the source of the matter antimatter asymmetry in our Universe.