Regular NOvA Collaboration Meeting Held at the University of California (Irvine, USA)

From 13 to 16 February 2020, a regular NOvA collaboration meeting was held at the University of California in Irvine (USA). The DLNP researchers representing JINR in the NOvA collaboration took an active part in it. Lyudmila Kolupayeva and Nikolay Anfimov delivered their reports there, while Olga Petrova and Andrey Sheshukov participated remotely. Oleg Samoylov made a summary of the group research results at the plenary session.

Pontecorvo Prize for 2019

Within its 127th session held on 20-21 February 2020, the JINR Scientific Council endorsed the decision of the International Jury on the awarding the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize 2019 to Professor Fabiola Gianotti (CERN) for the leading contribution to the experimental studies of fundamental interactions and discovery of the Higgs boson.

Review of the DLNP Seminar on February 18, 2020 by Mikhail Zarubin “Biological Processes under the Conditions of Low Background Radiation. Research Prospects at the Low-Background Laboratory of the Baksan Neutrino Observatory”

Authors: M.P. Zarubin, O.A. Kuldoshina, E.V. Kravchenko. Originally, underground laboratories were built for particle physics and astrophysics experiments where considerable cosmic ray flux reduction is needed. Later, the range of low-background radiation experiments extended to interdisciplinary studies in biology, medicine, geosciences and material sciences.

Introduction of the Precision Laser Inclinometer at the Mavlyanov Institute of Seismology, the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan

At the end of January 2020, two DLNP researchers M.V. Lyablin and A.M. Artikov went to Tashkent at the invitation of President of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan (ASRU) B.S. Yuldashev to introduce the Precision Laser Inclinometer (PLI). The introduction seminar took place at the Mavlyanov Institute of Seismology of ASRU. Mikhail Vasilyevich Lyablin presented the report “New methods for detection of microseismic vibrations”. The unique sensibility of the PLI and its capability of distinguishing low-frequency angular movements of the Earth’s surface were emphasized at the seminar. The fundamental necessity of using this device along with well-known methods for earthquake prediction was pointed out as well.

Review of the DLNP Seminar on February 12, 2020 by Alina Vishnyeva “New Results of the Search for Rare Events in the Borexino experiment”

The Borexino liquid scintillator detector, originally designed for solar neutrino study, is also a sensitive instrument in searching for rare events in the energy range of about 1 MeV. The recent results include the search for nonstandard neutrino interactions, as well as limits on diffuse neutrino fluxes from Supernovae, solar flare neutrinos and solar antineutrinos, expected as a combined effect of spin-flavour neutrino precession in the magnetic field of the Sun and neutrino oscillations.

Review of the DLNP Seminar on February 6, 2020 by Daniya Zinatulina “Studies of Muon Capture Using Gamma Spectroscopy. Status and Prospects”

The seminar was dedicated to the research of the ordinary muon capture (OMC) on different isotopically enriched targets, daughter products for nuclear double beta decay. These experiments provide new information for calculations of nuclear matrix elements (NMEs) of double beta decay (DBD). The refinement of the NME calculation of DBD is an important point for interpretation of experimental data in searching for the neutrinoless DBD, a key process for determining fundamental neutrino properties.

Review of the DLNP Seminar on February 5, 2020 by Oleg Smirnov “Neutrino Geophysics: Recent Data”

Neutrino geophysics is a new quickly developing field of science as a synergy of geology, geophysics and elementary particle physics. It studies the Earth’s interior by measuring geoneutrino fluxes at its surface. The Borexino collaboration has recently presented the final analysis of the obtained data after 12 years of the detector operation. The exposition was increased due both to additional data and to improvement of their selection criteria.

Review of the DLNP Seminar on January 28, 2020 by Osvaldo Civitarese (Department of Physics, University of La Plata, Argentina) "The ANDES Underground Laboratory Project"

This talk will be devoted to the presentation of the ANDES underground laboratory project, which is a component of the Agua Negra Tunnel road complex, a 14 Km long tunnel under the Andes high mountains connecting Argentina and Chile. We shall talk about the motivations, prospects and design of this facility, which will be the first of its type in the southern hemisphere.

Signals from Inside the Earth: Borexino Experiment Releases New Data on Geoneutrinos

Scientists involved in the Borexino collaboration have presented new results of the measurement of neutrinos originating from the interior of the Earth. The Borexino detector is located 1,400 metres below the Earth's surface in the Gran Sasso massif near Rome. The elusive "ghost particles" rarely interact with matter, making their detection extremely difficult. With this update, the researchers have now been able to access almost twice as many events as in the previous analysis of the data. The results provide an exclusive insight into processes and conditions in the Earth's interior that remain puzzling to this day.

Review of the DLNP Seminar on January 22, 2020 by Mark Shirchenko “Search for Sterile Neutrinos in Short-Baseline Experiments”

At the seminar, the status of the experiments on the search for sterile states of neutrinos was analysed for the range of mixing angles and mass parameters corresponding to oscillations within short distances (of about several metres to tens of metres). The predominant way of studying the processes of this kind are the experiments on nuclear experimental and power reactors.

Information Platform “Web Magazine and Club of JINR Employees” Was Officially Launched

At the end of the last year, on December 28, the public project “Web Magazine and Club of JINR Employees” was presented by its Head, an VBLHEP engineer Gleb Stiforov. The project, already nicknamed “MC2 Club”, is intended to accumulate on its web platform all the background and reference information, which could be helpful for JINR guests and staff members and which would make staying and living in Dubna convenient.

New Year Cake That NOvA baked!

Summing up the results of the passing year, the NOvA group at JINR presented its scientific achievements in a new way, with oscillation contours as cake decorations! On the cake icing you can see the results of the year 2019 of the oscillation data analysis obtained with neutrino and antineutrino beams in channels of electron neutrino appearance and muon neutrino disappearance.