The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Explorer is a proposed new neutrino detector off the coast of Canada, which seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of the site for an eventual very large neutrino telescope. The P-ONE group at the UofA is leading the Canadian efforts towards the study of the physics potential of a Pacific neutrino telescope. The P-ONE endeavour leverages the unique expertise of Ocean Networks Canada in deep sea operations and aims to detects neutrinos from GeV to the PeV scale.

Notable recent publications:

• Optical characterization of the P-ONE site [European Physics Journal C (2021) 81 1071]

• The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment [ Nature Astronomy vol. 4, pages913–915 (2020) ]

• First sensors deployed in Cascadia Basin [ JINST 14 (2019) no.02, P02013 ]

This is the largest neutrino experiment in the world, located at the South Pole, capable of observing neutrino interactions across a very large energy range. The DeepCore subarray has now collected the largest sample of atmospheric neutrinos ever recorded, using them to study neutrino oscillations in appearance and disappearance modes, sterile neutrinos and non-standard interactions. A major detector upgrade is being planned that will greatly improve the performance and potential of the experiment across all energies. The UofA group is actively involved in DeepCore and upgrade studies.

Notable recent publications:

• New measurement of neutrino oscillations [PRD 2023]

• Review of neutrino interaction physics with Neutrino Telescopes [EPJ Special Topics 2021]

• Constraints on non-standard interactions with IceCube DeepCore [PRD 2021]

• Search for sterile neutrinos w/8 years of data [PRL 125 (2020) 141801, PRD102 (2020) 052009 ]

• Appearance of tau neutrinos [Phys. Rev. D 99, 032007 (2019) ]

• Muon neutrino disappearance [Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 071801 (2018) ]

Recent seminar on neutrino oscillations with IceCube at SNOLAB (Nov. 2020).

Atmospheric neutrinos are used as a probe of oscillations and exotic phenomena, and are also a background for cosmic neutrino searches. Understanding their production is crucial to model their flux, thus reducing the uncertainties in these studies. I'm involved in an effort to do so by reanalyzing data from previous experiments and tuning the underlying hadronic interaction models.

Publications

• DAEMONFLUX: Data-Driven Muon-Calibrated Neutrino Flux [PRD 2023]

Conference proceedings

• A neutrino flux constrained by cosmic muons [ICRC 2021]

This research project has the goal of producing a new, very sensitive light detection unit by combining the properties of classic PMTs  with a state of the art development in material science being carried out within Canada.