Dr. Kam-Biu Luk
University of California, Berkeley

Pinning down the Smallest Kind of Neutrino Oscillation

Neutrinos are supposed to be massless in the Standard Model of particle physics for several decades. However, a series of experiments has recently provided compelling evidences for a new phenomenon, neutrino oscillation, that implies the three types of neutrinos observed in laboratories do have mass after all. Neutrino oscillation can be described with a set of three neutrino-mixing angles, of which the smallest one called 13 was unknown until recently. One approach for determining 13is to utilize a running nuclear reactor which is a copious source of low-energy electron antineutrinos. In this talk, the recent discovery of a new kind of neutrino oscillation due to a non-zero value of13observed in reactor-based experiments will be presented. The implications of this surprising observation will also be highlighted.

 

Refreshments will be served in CP 179 at 3:15 PM