Speaker
Description
The existence of baryon number violating processes is a necessary condition to explain matter-antimatter asymmetry and may also play a role in accessing a hidden sector and addressing the question of dark matter. The construction of the European Spallation Source (ESS) provides a unique opportunity to exploit a high intensity beam of cold neutrons to perform searches for baryon number violation. The HIBEAM/NNbar experiment will search for neutron-antineutron and neutron-sterile neutron conversions with an improvement in sensitivity of several orders of magnitude compared to previous searches. HIBEAM is the first stage of the full-scale NNbar experiment planned to take place at a fundamental physics beamline at the ESS after 2026. This exploratory stage will facilitate the validation of detector technologies, the measurement of backgrounds in situ, and the development of background rejection methods. An overview of the HIBEAM/NNbar experiment along with the developments towards a prototype detector at Stockholm University are presented in this talk.
