Würzburg 2018 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 68: Neutrinophysik III

T 68.7: Talk

Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 18:00–18:15, Z6 - SR 2.012

A thermal calorimeter for the activity measurement of the SOX antineutrino source — •Konrad Altenmüller for the Borexino collaboration — Technische Universität München

A thermal calorimeter was developed by TUM and INFN to measure the activity of a ¹⁴⁴Ce-¹⁴⁴Pr antineutrino source for the SOX experiment, which investigates short baseline neutrino oscillations with the Borexino detector to search for eV-scale sterile neutrinos. The source activity is estimated from the decay heat that is measured through the temperature increase of a well-defined water flow in a heat exchanger that surrounds the source. Adjustable measurement conditions and an elaborate thermal insulation allow an operation with negligible heat losses. In a blind measurement with an electrical source mockup it was shown that the heat of a decaying source can be measured with <0.2% uncertainty. This talk presents a complete overview on this apparatus and the final results of the characterization.