Welcome to the Brunner Neutrino Lab (BνL)

Our group focuses on determining the nature of the neutrino, i.e., whether neutrino and anti-neutrino are in fact the same particle, by searching for neutrinoless double-beta decays (0νββ) in the isotope ¹³⁶Xe. We are currently taking data with our EXO-200 detector, which is located about 650 m below the surface in the WIPP mine in south-east New Mexico, USA. So far, we could only report results of one of the most sensitive searches for 0νββ but have not observed a positive signal yet. In order to greatly improve the sensitivity of our measurement, the collaboration started developing a next-generation detector, called nEXO. This detector will contain 5 tonnes of liquid Xe and is anticipated to be located at the SNOLAB underground laboratory in Sudbury, Ontario.

The McGill group supports operation of EXO-200 and is involved in data analysis. For the nEXO project, we are developing vacuum ultra-violet light sources and are working on integrating photon detectors into larger area tiles. In addition, we are developing a technique to extract ¹³⁶Ba ions from xenon gas. This so-called Ba-tagging technique will allow an unambiguous identification of events as true ββ decays once a 0νββ signal has been observed.

Brunner Neutrino Lab Github

The Brunner group develops various projects for its lab and the experiments it performs. Some of the projects and software are made public as they have wide applicability and could benefit others working in labs. The list of projects currently hosted on the BνL github is:

• Lab Environmental Monitor: This project records environmental variables from various sensors such as a particulate counter or pressure differential sensor.

The link to the BνL github is available here.

If you are interested in joining the exciting search for the nature of neutrinos, then contact me ( ).

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News

• November 2023
  Soud defended his Dissertation!
  Congratulations to Soud Al Kharusi for defending his PhD Dissertation on November 23^rd!


• June 2023
  Lisa wins the First poster prize in the CAP Particle Physics Division!
  Congratulations to Lisa Rudolph for winning the First place in the CAP PPD devision and the Second place overall at CAP for her poster on A Xe-127 calibration source for liquid Xenon experiments. .


• May 2023
  Hussain obtained an FQRNT Scholarship!
  Congratulations to Hussain Rasiwala for receiving an FQRNT Scholarship for his great academic performance!


• April 2023
  Kevin defended his Dissertation!
  Congratulations to Kevin Murray for defending his PhD Dissertation on April 11^th!


• September 2022
  Hussain is awarded with the Chalk-Rowles Fellowship!
  Congratulations to Hussain Rassiwala for receiving the Chalk-Rowles Fellowship for his exemplary performance during his Graduate studies!


• August 2022
  Congratulations to Laura and Michael for their performance at CASST 2022!
  Congratulations to Laura for winning the CASST 2022 Grand Prize Award and 3rd place at the Summer Student Talk Competition for her talk on pulse fitter for LoLX waveforms. Michael received a CASST Honorable Mention for his presentation on the Cloud Chamber he built during summer!


• June 2022
  Soud wins the Overall Student Poster Prize at the CAP 2022 Congress!
  Congratulations to Soud for winning the 1st place in the Overall Student Poster category and 2nd place in the Particle Physics Division at CAP 2022 for his poster on Chroma simulations for the nEXO outer detector! Well done. You can find Soud's poster in full resolution here.


• May 2022
  Congratulations
  Congratulations to Hussain Rassiwala for graduating with his Master's degree and continuing into his PhD! Well done!


• April 2022
  Welcome to the Summer 2022 Students
  Welcome to Laura Gonzalez Escudero, Minya Bai, Kevin Nguyen, Katherine Lei, Jordan Agathe, Yossera Taghi and Michael Hétu; undergraduate students who will be working at the BνL for the Summer of 2022. Welcome back to Megan Cvitan who joins us again for the summer, this time as a TRIUMF MSc student.


• February 2022
  Publication
  The paper on the BνL Laser Ablation Source has been published in the Internation Journal of Mass Spectrometry.
  K. Murray, et al., Characterization of a Spatially Resolved Multi-Element Laser Ablation Ion Source
  Int. J. Mass Spectrom 472 116763 (2022), arXiv:2108.10758 .

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