Wednesday 2 December 2015 

Speaker: Leigh Whitehead (University College London)


Title: "The CHIPS Experiment" 

Abstract: CHIPS (Cherenkov Detectors In mine PitS) is an R&D project aiming to blaze the trail towards affordable megaton scale neutrino detectors whilst contributing to the world knowledge on the neutrino mass hierarchy and delta_cp. The first step on the way to this goal was the deployment of CHIPS-M, a small prototype in an open mine pit in northern Minnesota, in 2014. CHIPS-M was raised and refurbished to prototype PMT plane designs in 2015. The second 10 kton prototype, CHIPS-10, is in the design process and is due for deployment in the summer of 2017. CHIPS-10 combined with NOvA and T2K will give over three sigma sensitivity to the mass hierarchy and delta_cp. I will give an overview of the experiment, show data from CHIPS-M, and discuss the design of CHIPS-10 and our plans for the future.