LONU-LENS

Mini-Workshop on Low-Energy Solar Neutrinos & LENS at Virginia Tech

We are hosting a mini-workshop on low-energy solar neutrinos and discussion of the physics program and technical progress of the Low-Energy Neutrino Spectroscopy (LENS) on Saturday and Sunday, October 14-15, 2006 in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The purpose is to crystallize the case for low-energy solar neutrino measurements now, bring everyone up-to-date on the physics reach and status of LENS R&D, and solicit advice and new collaborators. At the end we hope to have a firm foundation for future proposals and for addressing future committees such as NuSAG, set up by the funding agencies.

The timing is ideal, given the strong endorsement of this research in the recent joint APS neutrino study and the clear importance of these measurements displayed in numerous talks at the Neutrino 2006 conference. In addition, a recent letter from some 30 members of the community to the Agencies pressed for timely action this Fall.

The meeting will have these thrusts:

  •
Discussion of the physics and astrophysics landscape and a survey of other experiments designed to address the low-energy solar spectrum − these by way of setting the world context for LENS as the sole charged-current measurement now being considered.
  •
Presentations on the current LENS design (highlighting recent progress and putting the past history into perspective), emerging views of a full-scale LENS detector (a 125 ton detector with 10 tons of In with a design goal − together with LENS-Cal being developed in Russia − being a ~4% measurement of the neutrino luminosity of the sun in 5 y) and plans for MINILENS (to demonstrate the technical and analysis strategies of LENS and show that pp-like events can actually be detected with expected efficiencies).
  • Review of current and future developments of DUSEL as a context for LENS.
  • Open discussion of possible new directions and opportunities for collaboration.

 


Return to Workshop Homepage