Speaker
Description
Neutrinos are the most amasing and interesting among the elementary particles. Neutrino physics is a vast field of research with beautiful physics and many still unanswered fundamental questions. This lecture is intended as an Introduction to Neutrino Physics. We begin by discussing briefly the history of the neutrino. The natural sources of neutrinos - the Sun, the Earth atmosphere, the Earth itself, the supernovae and the Early Universe, are briefly considered next.
The discovery of neutrino oscillations and the experiments which contributed to this discovery are reviewed. The theory of neutrino oscillations in vacuum, as well as the experimental proofs of oscillations, are presented next. The parameters which characterise 3-neutrino mixing and oscillations are reviewed. The matter effects in neutrino oscillations, with examples of the cases of oscillations of neutrino traversing the Earth and taking place in the Sun, are considered.
A discussion of the nature - Dirac or Majorana - of massive neutrino follows. CP violation in neutrino oscillations are briefly considered. The current data on the 3-neutrino mixing parameters, as well as, on the neutrino mass scale (the lightest neutrino mass) are reviewed. The possible manifestations of New Physics associated with the existence of non-zero neutrino masses and neutrino mixing are briefly discussed. The program of future research in Neutrino Physics extends beyond 2040. The goals of this program and some of the experiments aiming to achieve these goals, are also briefly reviewed.