LVD

Home page of the Experiment: http://www.lngs.infn.it/site/exppro/lvd/lvd.html

The experiment has been taking data in the Gran Sasso Laboratory since June 1992 and has performed a number of interesting measurements and observations relative to high energy muons over a very wide slant depth interval ranging from 3000 to 20000 m.w.e.. At the same time the LVD experiment has been monitoring with ever increasing active mass for Super Nova gravitational stellar collapses over 95% of the Galaxy. No such event has been up to now detected.

Today, the LVD apparatus comprises a 1 kiloton liquid scintillator mass and the main goal of the experiment, remains the study of Super Nova gravitational stellar Collapses. As a matter of fact, even today, LVD represents the most powerful instrument based on liquid scintillator for the study of low energy neutrino bursts.

LVD is sensitive not only to the interactions of anti-n e with the liquid scintillator free protons but also to the charged and neutral current interactions with the scintillator C nuclei. The comparison of the number of interactions and of the neutrino energy spectra in the various LVD channels, coupled to analogous information from other experiments, will allow not only for the detailed study of the gravitational collapse dynamics of massive stars, of the Super Nova explosion mechanism, of the EOS of matter at nuclear densities, but for the study of the neutrino masses as well.

Since February 1999, LVD has joined the SNEWS (Super Nova Early Warning System) network. The purpose of this project, carried out by the major experiments sensitive to neutrino bursts (AMANDA, LVD, MACRO, SNO, SuperKamiokande) is to provide an early Super Nova alert to the astronomers based on the coincident neutrino burst signal from a number of experiments.