Stephan Meighen-Berger (U. Melbourne): Observing Atmospheric Tau Neutrino Appearance with JUNO

Sydney CPPC Seminar March 7th 2024

The study of atmospheric neutrinos, produced by cosmic-ray showers in the atmosphere, has proven highly successful, with one of the crowning achievements being the discovery of neutrino oscillations. These oscillations are the primary production mechanism for one of the three neutrino flavors, the tau-neutrino. To this day, observing this flux of atmospheric tau neutrinos has proven elusive.
In this talk, I will introduce the first practical method of observing this flux in a next-generation neutrino observatory, the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). This observation is made possible via JUNO's size and sensitivity to low-energy signals. I will then also discuss the usefulness of this method in future new physics searches.