Dissertation Defense - Sierra Wilde - Yale University

Rare Event Searches in Neutrino Detectors

Nearly 100 years after Pauli's initial theory, particle physicists still have major unanswered questions about the fundamental properties of the neutrino. These elusive particles hold many secrets and studying them gives us opportunities to discover Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics. The detection of neutrinoless double beta decay will be proof that neutrinos are Majorana fermions and will start to answer questions about the origins of matter. Discovering sterile neutrinos could help identify the nature of dark matter or explain the neutrino's mass scale. nEXO and the BeEST are both experiments that are designed to search for answers to questions about the fundamental properties of the neutrino through precision measurements of β decay. I will describe improvements to nEXO's photodetector response analysis and the search for a new BSM physics particle in the BeEST.

Thesis committee: David Moore, Reina Maruyama, Laura Newburgh, Ian Moult, and Erica Caden (Snolab)