College of Arts and Sciences at Governors State University Announces Winter 2008 Dean’s List

The College of Arts and Sciences at Governors State University recently recognized undergraduate students who earned a 3.7 grade point average or higher during the Winter 2008 trimester

DANSSino: a pilot version of the DANSS neutrino detector

DANSSino is a reduced pilot version of a solid-state detector of reactor antineutrinos (to be created within the DANSS project and installed under the industrial 3 GW(th) reactor of the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant -- KNPP). Numerous tests performed at a distance of 11 m from the reactor core demonstrate operability of the chosen design and reveal the main sources of the background. In spite of its small size (20x20x100 ccm), the pilot detector turned out to be quite sensitive to reactor antineutrinos, detecting about 70 IBD events per day with the signal-to-background ratio about unity.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1304.369

Search for sterile neutrinos at the DANSS experiment

DANSS is a highly segmented 1~m${}^3$ plastic scintillator detector. Its 2500 one meter long scintillator strips have a Gd-loaded reflective cover. The DANSS detector is placed under an industrial 3.1~$\mathrm{GW_{th}}$ reactor of the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant 350~km NW from Moscow. The distance to the core is varied on-line from 10.7~m to 12.7~m. The reactor building provides about 50~m water-equivalent shielding against the cosmic background. DANSS detects almost 5000 $\widetilde\nu_e$ per day at the closest position with the cosmic background less than 3$\%$. The inverse beta decay process is used to detect $\widetilde\nu_e$. Sterile neutrinos are searched for assuming the $4\nu$ model (3 active and 1 sterile $\nu$). The exclusion area in the $\Delta m_{14}^2,\sin^22\theta_{14}$ plane is obtained using a ratio of positron energy spectra collected at different distances. Therefore results do not depend on the shape and normalization of the reactor $\widetilde\nu_e$ spectrum, as well as on the detector efficiency. Results are based on 966 thousand antineutrino events collected at 3 distances from the reactor core. The excluded area covers a wide range of the sterile neutrino parameters up to $\sin^22\theta_{14}<0.01$ in the most sensitive region.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, version accepted for publicatio

The first experimental evidence for the (M1+E2) mixed character of the 9.2 keV transition in Th-227

The 9.2 keV nuclear transition in Th-227 was studied in the beta(-)-decay of Ac-227 by means of the internal conversion electron spectroscopy to clarify the spin-parity assignment of the ground state and the two lowest excited states of Th-227. The transition multipolarity was proved to be of mixed character M1+ E2 and the spectroscopic admixture parameter delta(2)(E2/M1) = 0.695 +/- 0.248(vertical bar delta(E2/M1)vertical bar = 0.834 +/- 0.149) was determined. Nonzero value of delta(E2/M1) questioned the present theoretical interpretation of low-lying levels of Th-227. Calculations performed prefer the 1/2(+), 3/2(+), and 3/2(+) sequence instead of the adopted 1/2(+), 5/2(+) and 3/2(+) one for the 0.0, 9.2, and 24.3keV levels, respectively.Web of Science820art. no. 13659