Welcome to the EXO-Carleton home page

The Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO) detector and its successor nEXO are designed as both a time projection chamber and a scintillation counter to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0vbb).  Such decays can only occur if neutrinos are their own anti-particle (Majorana): observing 0vbb would revolutionize our understanding of these fundamental particles.  The discovery of 0vbb signal may also provide a first measurement of the neutrino mass scale.  The EXO-Carleton group members are involved in many aspects of this experimental program as members of the global EXO collaboration:

  • Conclude the analysis of EXO-200 data;
  • Contribute to the design of nEXO, with the SNOLAB Cryopit as preferred location;
  • Perform high-voltage studies in liquid xenon using EXO-100 at Carleton, as research and development towards nEXO;
  • Characterize vacuum-ultraviolet sensitive silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) as candidate photon detectors in nEXO;
  • Measure scintillation and Cherenkov light production in liquid xenon using such SiPMs in the LoLX experiment;
  • Develop barium-tagging techniques to improve the sensitivity of a future 0vbb experiment.

If you would like to work with our group, please visit our department's page for future graduate students or contact Professors Razvan Gornea, Caio Licciardi and Simon Viel.

 

nEXO design in the SNOLAB Cryopit