Abstract:
SND@LHC is a compact and stand-alone experiment to perform measurements with neutrinos produced at the LHC in a hitherto unexplored pseudo-rapidity region of 7.2 < 𝜂 < 8.4, complementary to all the other experiments at the LHC. The experiment is located 480 m downstream of IP1 and the detector is composed of a hybrid system based on an 800 kg target mass of tungsten plates, interleaved with emulsion and electronic trackers, followed downstream by a calorimeter and a muon system. The configuration allows efficiently distinguishing between all three neutrino flavours, opening a unique opportunity to probe physics of heavy flavour production at the LHC in the region that is not accessible to ATLAS, CMS and LHCb. This region is of particular interest for future circular colliders and for predictions of very high-energy atmospheric neutrinos. The detector concept is also well suited to searching for Feebly Interacting Particles via signatures of scattering in the detector target. The first phase aims at operating the detector throughout LHC Run 3. The experiment has taken data since 2022 and has recently reported the first observation of collider neutrinos. We shall review the first experimental results and the plans for the upgrade to operate at the high-luminosity LHC. A new era of collider neutrino physics has just started.
Short bio:
Giovanni De Lellis was born in Naples, Italy, in 1973. He graduated in Physics summa cum laude in 1996 and in piano in 1997. He got his Ph.D. in Physics in 2000 with a thesis on the “First observation of the associated charm production in neutrino interactions”, where he firstly observed this process in the data collected by the CHORUS experiment at CERN. He is Full Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Naples.
After studying the charm production in neutrino interactions in CHORUS, he moved to the OPERA experiment, designed to observe muon to tau neutrino oscillations, for the first time in appearance mode with a neutrino beam at CERN and the detector located in Gran Sasso (Italy). In OPERA he acted as coordinator of the emulsion scanning laboratories from 2008 till 2012, before being appointed Spokesperson. He served this role from 2012 until the end of the experimental program in 2019. In 2015 OPERA reported the observation of tau neutrino appearance in a muon neutrino beam with a significance above 5s, while in 2018 final results were given with more than 6s significance and with the estimate of the oscillation parameters with an improved accuracy. In 2018 he patented with members of his group in Naples a method to achieve nanometric accuracy with optical microscopy, getting the unprecedented resolution of 60 nm. In 2018, he did some feasibility studies to build a detector and study neutrinos for the first time produced by a collider, the LHC. These studies laid the foundations of the "Scattering and Neutrino Detector at the LHC” experiment, with 180 scientists in 13 Countries and CERN. In 2020 he was elected as the first Spokesperson of the experiment.
Steven Lowette