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Using Neutrinos to Explain Why We Exist
Nuclear and Particle Physics
Shen, Fangfei
The following question has bogged physicists for years: Why do we exist? The conundrum originates from our universe's matter-antimatter asymmetry: as far as we can tell, there's way more matter than antimatter out there. However, given what we know about the Big Bang, antimatter and matter should have been created in equal parts. Yet, all the antimatter and matter did not completely annihilate. Something caused the balance to tilt towards matter, leaving us with a matter-dominated universe. What happened? Physicists are not completely sure, but they think neutrinos might be part of the answer. DAEδALUS, the Decay At-rest Experiment for δ_CP At the Laboratory for Underground Science, is a proposed experiment that will explore the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem using neutrinos. This presentation will provide an overview of the DAEδALUS experiment, its scientific motivation, and how it might explain why we exist.