Status of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

Abstract

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a 1,000 ton heavy water Cerenkov detector under construction in Sudbury, Canada. Two v reactions on deuterium, one flavour-independent and the other restricted to the electron flavour, will allow model-independent tests of solar v oscillations and, if a supernova occurs in our galaxy, direct searches for v μ and v τ masses down to 20eV. The status of construction and the methods developed to extract the v signals are discussed.