Neutrino Oscillations in the Heavens and on Earth

Seventy years after the existence of the neutrino was postulated by Wolfgang Pauli, these elusive particles remain surrounded by mystery. One of the most fundamental questions about neutrinos is whether they have an identically vanishing mass, as assumed by the Standard Model of particle physics, or not. Direct mass measurements have proven to be extremely difficult to perform, and have yielded so far only upper limits. However, if neutrino (flavour) oscillations do happen, this would automatically imply that at least one of the three neutrinos (the electron, muon or tau neutrino) must have a non-zero mass. The present experimental data indicate that both the solar and atmospheric neutrino deficits can be explained by the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, while the positive signal reported by the accelerator- based LSND experiment remains unconfirmed after the first round of measurements performed with MiniBooNE at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. This talk reviews the current status of the neutrino oscillations experiments, and discusses briefly the latest results from MiniBooNE.

Dr. Ion Stancu
Associate Professor of Physics
Department of Physics and Astronomy
The University of Alabama