OscSNS

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will be coming online over the next few years and will herald a new era in neutron research. In addition to providing fluxes of high-intensity neutrons, the SNS will also be a prodigious source of neutrinos from π⁺ and μ⁺ decay at rest. This neutrino beam can be used for high-precision neutrino oscillation experiments. The neutrino flux from the SNS is known extremely well and includes anti-ν_μ and ν_e from μ⁺ decay at rest, as well as the 30 MeV mono-energetic ν_μ from π⁺ decay at rest. The mono-energetic ν_μ can be used to test for the existence of light sterile neutrinos via the neutral-current reaction ν_μ C → ν_μ C^*(15.11). An oscillation or suppression of this reaction would be direct evidence for sterile neutrinos.

The OscSNS detector is based on the LSND and MiniBooNE detectors and can be built for ~ $12M (or ~ $8M if the MiniBooNE oil and phototubes are reused and ~ $5M if the tank size is reduced). OscSNS will achieve the world's best neutrino oscillation sensitivities for anti-ν_μ → anti-ν_e oscillations, ν_μ → ν_e oscillations, and ν_μ → ν_X oscillations at a Δm² scale of > ~0.1 eV². In addition, OscSNS can make the world's best measurements of ν_e e → ν_e e elastic scattering and ν_e C → e^- N charged-current scattering.