Dissertation Defense: Benjamin Foust, Yale University, “Precise Measurement of the U-235 Antineutrino Energy Spectrum”
Neutrino experimentation is an important pathway to physics beyond the standard model, raising questions on how neutrinos obtain their vanishingly small but non-zero mass, what that mass is, and if they are their own antiparticle. Antineutrinos, as an abundant product of nuclear decay chains, are also important to advancing our understanding of nuclear physics and verifying nuclear databases.