Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

This document is a technical progress report on work performed at the University of Pennsylvania during the current year on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory project. The motivation for the experiment is the measurement of neutrinos emitted by the sun. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) is a second generation dedicated solar neutrino experiment which will extend the results of our work with the Kamiokande II detector by measuring three reactions of neutrinos rather than the single reaction measured by the Kamiokande experiment. The collaborative project includes physicists from Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Full funding for the construction of this facility was obtained in January 1990, and its construction is estimated to take five years. The motivation for the SNO experiment is to study the fundamental properties of neutrinos, in particular the mass and mixing parameters, which remain undetermined after decades of experiments in neutrino physics utilizing accelerators and reactors as sources of neutrinos. To continue the study of neutrino properties it is necessary to use the sun as a neutrino source. The long distance to the sun makes the search for neutrino mass sensitive to much smaller mass than can be studied with terrestrial sources. Furthermore, the matter density in the sun is sufficiently large to enhance the effects of small mixing between electron neutrinos and mu or tau neutrinos. This experiment, when combined with the results of the radiochemical {sup 37}Cl and {sup 71}Ga experiments and the Kamiokande II experiment, should extend our knowledge of these fundamental particles, and as a byproduct, improve our understanding of energy generation in the sun.