Neutrino Physics Research

Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe, yet they interact so weakly with matter that detecting and characterizing them requires some of the most sensitive instruments ever built. A central discovery of the past few decades is that neutrinos oscillate — they spontaneously change between electron, muon, and tau flavors as they travel, a phenomenon confirmed by experiments like the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, KamLAND, and Daya Bay using solar, atmospheric, and reactor antineutrino sources. This behavior implies that neutrinos have nonzero mass, which is not accommodated by the Standard Model of particle physics, making the precise measurement of those masses and the possible existence of additional "sterile" neutrino states active frontiers of inquiry. Researchers are also investigating whether neutrinos are their own antiparticles — a question probed through searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay — and working to understand how neutrino flavor transformation shapes the dynamics and nucleosynthesis of core-collapse supernovae.

Works

89,851

Total citations

767,984

Keywords

Neutrino Flavor TransformationNeutrino OscillationsDouble-Beta DecaySupernova SimulationsSterile NeutrinosSolar Neutrinos