Current experiments

  • MoEDAL

MoEDAL searches for magnetic monopoles and other exotic particles at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN. We are involved in the data analysis and developing novel detectors to be deployed as a part of MoEDAL and at the future monopole experiments

  • MONUMENT

The fundamental weakness of the current neutrinoless double beta decay searches is the large uncertainty in translating the half-life of this process into a corresponding value of the effective Majorana mass. Without reducing this uncertainty, one does not know if the next-generation experiments stand a chance of fully covering the inverted hierarchy region. MONUMENT is helping to address the issue by measuring the Ordinary Muon Capture (OMC).  OMC shares an important similarity to the neutrinoless double beta decay, allowing the theorists to better understand the correspondence between the half-life and neutrino mass

  • DARWIN

DARWIN is an ultimate dark matter detector that will utilize 50 tons of liquid xenon for the direct detection of particle dark matter. Thanks to its technological advantages, it will also be able to perform sensitive searches for other processes/particles, such as neutrinoless double beta decay, solar neutrinos, axions

  • EXO

EXO searches for neutrinoless double beta decay – a hypothetical nuclear process that violates lepton number conservation. Existence of this decay would prove that neutrinos are Majorana particles. Our contributions to EXO include data analysis and characterization of VUV reflectivity of prospective materials and photodetection efficiency of novel photodetectors in liquid xenon for the next generation experiments

MoEDAL detector
Conventional bar magnets are also called ‘magnetic dipoles’ because they have two magnetic poles (a “North” and a “South” magnetic pole, like the Earth). In theory, “magnetic monopoles” could exist that act like an isolated “magnetic charge”, i.e. either a “North” or a “South” magnetic pole. Credit: CERN/MoEDAL
EXO-200 time projected chamber (TPC) detector during installation in the vacuum cryostat

Previous experiments

  • Double Chooz

Double Chooz was a neutrino oscillation experiment dedicated to the measurement of the neutrino mixing angle – theta-13

First Double Chooz result featured on the Sheldon’s whiteboard
Double Chooz detector
CHOOZ nuclear power plant, Chooz, France. Double Chooz detector locations highlighted