School of Physics Colloquium

Speaker: Patrick Huber (Virginia Tech)

Host: Prof. Nepomuk Otte & Ignacio Taboada

Title: Neutrinos, reactors & anomalies

Abstract: Abstract: Neutrinos were discovered using a nuclear reactor as a source and since then much of our knowledge about neutrinos comes from experiments using reactors. I will briefly touch on the history of the use of reactors as neutrino source and motivate why they still play an important role today and in the future. An overview of the physics of how neutrinos are generated in reactors and how we can compute neutrino fluxes will follow. The developments of the past decade will be reviewed in particular. 2021 may have seen the resolution of one major riddle regarding the neutrino yield from uranium-235 and I will comment on this. I also will present the current status of the sterile neutrino in electron neutrino disappearance  including recent gallium results. I will conclude with an outlook towards the future both for our understanding of the reactor neutrino flux and reactor neutrino measurements. I also will be touching on coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering at reactors.

Bio: Patrick Huber is a professor of physics and an affiliate professor in the nuclear engineering program and a member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 2008. Huber conducts research on neutrino physics. He has helped build an internationally recognized program in neutrino physics both in basic science and applications to global and national security. He has authored more than 170 publications and has built an impactful research program.

In 2010, Huber co-founded the Center for Neutrino Physics at Virginia Tech and since 2018 he is serving as its director.. He was a lead developer of the GLoBES software package which is the standard for computing the physics sensitivity of many large neutrino experiments. In 2011, he performed what is currently the most accurate calculation of the reactor antineutrino spectrum emitted by nuclear reactors.

He has been a member or leader of a large number of study and planning efforts in the neutrino community, including his current service on the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5), setting the research and budget priorities for the field in the United States for the next decade.

He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Fermilab Distinguished Scholar, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, Early Career Research Award of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics and election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

He earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Technical University of Munich, Germany.