SNO+ is a large liquid scintillator-based experiment located 2 km underground at SNOLAB, Sudbury, Canada. It reuses the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory detector, consisting of a 12 m diameter acrylic vessel which will be filled with about 780 tonnes of ultra-pure liquid scintillator. Designed as a multipurpose neutrino experiment, the primary goal of SNO+ is a search for the neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) of130Te. In Phase I, the detector will be loaded with 0.3% natural tellurium, corresponding to nearly 800 kg of130Te, with an expected effective Majorana neutrino mass sensitivity in the region of 55–133 meV, just above the inverted mass hierarchy. Recently, the possibility of deploying up to ten times more natural tellurium has been investigated, which would enable SNO+ to achieve sensitivity deep into the parameter space for the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy in the future. Additionally, SNO+ aims to measure reactor antineutrino oscillations, low energy solar neutrinos, and geoneutrinos, to be sensitive to supernova neutrinos, and to search for exotic physics. A first phase with the detector filled with water will begin soon, with the scintillator phase expected to start after a few months of water data taking. The0νββPhase I is foreseen for 2017.
Results are reported from a joint analysis of Phase I and Phase II data from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. The effective electron kinetic energy threshold used is T eff = 3.5 MeV, the lowest analysis threshold yet achieved with water Cherenkov detector data. In units of 10 6 cm −2 s −1 , the total flux of active-flavor neutrinos from 8 B decay in the Sun measured using the neutral current (NC) reaction of neutrinos on deuterons, with no constraint on the 8 B neutrino energy spectrum, is found to be NC = 5.140 +0.160 −0.158 (stat) +0.132 −0.117 (syst). These uncertainties are more than a factor of 2 smaller than previously published results. Also presented are the spectra of recoil electrons from the charged current reaction of neutrinos on deuterons and the elastic scattering of electrons. A fit to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory data in which the free parameters directly describe the total 8 B neutrino flux and the energy-dependent ν e survival probability provides a measure of the total 8
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