Open Questions: Neutrino Physics

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Introduction

Solar neutrinos

Atmospheric neutrinos

Neutrino oscillation

Mixing angle

Neutrino mass

Neutrino parity

Neutrino-muon anomalies

Sterile neutrinos

Neutrinoless double beta decay

Recommended references: Web sites

Recommended references: Magazine/journal articles

Recommended references: Books

Introduction

Recommended references: Web sites

Site indexes

Open Directory Project: Particle Physics: Neutrino: Categorized and annotated links. A version of this list is at Google, with entries sorted in "page rank" order.
Neutrino Unbound: Huge and overwhelming categorized collection of links to anything and everything related to neutrinos.
The Neutrino Oscillation Industry: Many links to other neutrino experiments and information on neutrino physics.
Super-Kamiokande Links: Good collection of links which includes both pages of general information and neutrino research sites.
Useful links about NuMI/MINOS: Neutrino links related to Fermilab neutrino experiment. More links here.
Galaxy: Neutrino Detection: Categorized site directory. Entries usually include descriptive annotations.

Sites with general resources

The Ultimate Neutrino Page: Substantial collection of information and links about neutrinos, by Juha Peltoniemi.
John Bahcall's Home Page: Contains a number of articles on solar neutrinos and neutrino physics in general.
Janet Conrad: Home page of a neutrino physicist at Columbia University. Main page about neutrinos is Janet's Neutrino Oscillation Page, but additional neutrino information and links can be found on other pages of the site.
The Borexino group at Princeton: Reasearch group home page with list of publications and external links. The page About Neutrinos provices a very concise summary of the topic.
BooNE: Booster Neutrino Experiment: Home page of a large research project investigating neutrino oscillations and mass. See especially the pages dealing with Cross Sections.
Super-Kamiokande at UC Irvine: Very good collection of information on neutrinos, including an introductory overview, frequently-asked questions, general information on neutrinos and the Super-Kamiokande experiment, external links, a previous version of the main page, an even older version, and the announcement on June 5, 1998 of evidence for neutrino mass. Another copy of the press release is here. Pages are maintained by Dave Casper.
Super-Kamiokande: Official home page of the world's largest underground neutrino observatory.
Super-Kamiokande U. S. Collaboration Home Page: Additional information and links.
K2K Long-baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment: Home page of experiment that measures, at Super-Kamiokande, neutrinos produced using the 12GeV proton synchrotron accelerator at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba.
The MINOS Experiment and NuMI Beamline: Home page of Fermilab-based experiment investigating neutrino oscillations. The site contains general information, news, an overview of neutrino physics, with external links. There's more in the facts of neighbors section, including more external links.
GALLEX Heidelberg Homepage: Information on the Gallex solar neutrino experiment.
Neutrino Oscillation Magnetic Detector: An experiment at CERN to detect neutrino oscillation.
Super-Kamiokande at the University of Hawai`i: Contains links to good news and survey articles on neutrino research.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory: Home page of the Canadian observatory that uses 1000 tons of heavy water to search for neurtino oscillations. Results in June 2001 helped confirm the existence of such oscillations. Includes useful external links.
KamLAND: Home page of the KamLAND neutrino experiment.
KamLAND: Description of the KamLAND experiment which found strong evidence for neutrino oscillation in the anti-neutrino flux of nuclear reactors.
Super-Kamiokande & K2K at Boston University: Information provided by research team at Boston University.
Super-K Finds Evidence For Neutrino Mass: Links to press releases and news stories on the June 1998 announcement of evidence for neutrino mass.
AMANDA II Project: Web site of a neutrino telescope in Antarctica.

Surveys, overviews, tutorials

Neutrino: Article from Wikipedia. See also Solar neutrino problem.
History of the Neutrino: Very good overview, with more detailed history here. Includes links and general information on neutrinos as well as history. Pages are maintained by Didier Verkindt.
Neutrino Physics: Collection of excellent reviews and talks on neutrino physics by Hitoshi Murayama. Subjects convered include neutrino mass, neutrino oscillation, and CPT violation.
Neutrinos and the mysterious Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix: March 2003 essay by John Baez dealing with neutrino mass. Contains some useful external links.
Neutrinos: ghosts of matter: June 2005 article from Physics World, by Dave Wark. "The discovery that neutrinos have mass and can oscillate between different flavours was one of the major breakthroughs in particle physics in the past decade, but there is much about these mysterious particles that we still do not understand."
The origin of neutrino mass: Summary of May 2002 article from Physics World, by Hitoshi Murayama. "New experimental data, which show that neutrinos have mass, are forcing theorists to revise the Standard Model of particle physics."
Solar neutrino puzzle is solved: July 2001 article from Physics World, by Katie Pennicott. "New evidence that solar neutrinos can change 'flavour' confirms that our understanding of the Sun is correct and that neutrinos have mass."
Neutrino mass discovered: July 1998 article from Physics World, by L. Wolfenstein. "A team of US and Japanese physicists has obtained convincing evidence that neutrinos have mass, finally settling one of the most fundamental questions in particle physics."
Neutrino messages from across the Universe: March 2001 news article from Physics Web, about AMANDA, the "Antarctic muon and neutrino detector array".
Tau neutrino identified at last: July 2000 news article from Physics Web. "The first direct evidence for the existence of the tau neutrino has finally been found.."
CERN-Gran Sasso neutrino experiment is approved: December 1999 news article from Physics Web. "An experiment to send neutrinos from the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva to the Gran Sasso underground in central Italy, 730 km away, was approved last week. The experiment will search for evidence of neutrino mass, which has important implications for particle physics and cosmology."
New upper limit to neutrino mass: November 1999 news article from Physics Web. "An international team of physicists has found a new upper limit for the effective electron neutrino mass. According to physicists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and the Kurchatov institute in Moscow, the neutrino must have a mass of not more than 0.2 eV - which is 2.5 million times smaller than the mass of the electron."
Physicists look to neutrino factory: November 1999 news article from Physics Web. "A muon storage ring could be an ideal "neutrino factory" according to a team from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US. The group, led by Robert Palmer, hope to develop a high-energy, high-luminosity muon-muon collider."
New generation of neutrino experiments begins: July 1999 news article from Physics Web. "The K2K experiment in Japan has detected its first neutrino. The neutrino beam was produced at the KEK particle physics lab in Tsukuba, which is on the east coast near Tokyo, and detected some 250 km away at the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory in central Japan."
Neutrino lab sees "first light": June 1999 news article from Physics Web. "The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada has detected its first neutrinos. The observatory consists of 10000 photomultiplier tubes that surround a 1000-tonne tank of ultrapure heavy water located some 2000 metres below ground."
Neutrinos may decay: April 1999 news article from Physics Web. "The observation of neutrino oscillations - and hence neutrino mass - by the Super-Kamiokande experiment last year was one of the major physics discoveries of the 1990s. However, a team of US scientists is now proposing that the results can be explained by a new phenomenon - neutrino decay. Their model can, they claim, account for all neutrino anomalies with just three flavours of neutrino and is consistent with all experimental results to date."
Super-Kamiokande finds neutrino mass: June 1998 news article from Physics Web. "A team of Japanese and American physicists claim to have found evidence that neutrinos have mass. Experiments at the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan suggest a neutrino mass of 0.07 electron volts - less than one millionth of the mass of the electron."
Neutrinos Matter: Elementary presentation about neutrino mass.
Mysterious and Invisible: 1995 article from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Seems to have good links.
Solar Neutrinos: Where We Are, Where We Are Going: Slide presentation given by John Bahcall at the 2001: A Spacetime Odyssey conference.
Implications of Solar Neutrino Experiments: Overview with links to detailed technical reports.
Tau Neutrino at Fermilab: About the detection of the tau neutrino.
Neutrino Physics at Fermilab: Concerning the search for neutrino mass.
The Solar Neutrino Problem: By Alan Knapman.
The Neutrino Frontier: July 2006 Scientific American In Focus article, subtitled "At fermilab, particle smashing yields to flavor changing."
SNO Nus Is Good News: September 2001 news story from Scientific American on observations at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory which help confirm neutrino oscillation and solve the solar neutrino problem.
Neutrinos and 'the theory of everything': December 1999 news article about the MINOS experiment to search for evidence of neutrino oscillation.
The Neutrino and the SNP: Good overview paper on neutrinos and the solar neutrino problem, from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
What is a neutrino?: Question and answer from Scientific American's Ask the Expert section.
Neutrino Astrophysics: Lecture notes by Steve Lloyd, from a course on Elementary Particle Physics.
The Solar Neutrino Problem: Explanation (which is not quite up to date with recent findings), part of the Physics FAQ.

Recommended references: Magazine/journal articles

Solving the Solar Neutrino Problem
Arthur B. McDonald; Joshua R. Klein; David L. Wark
Scientific American, April 2003: The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory has solved a 30-year-old mystery by showing that neutrinos from the sun change species en route to the earth.
Double or Nothing
Peter Weiss
Science News, July 6, 2002, pp. 10-12: The confirmed observation of neutrino oscillation implies that the particles have mass. That makes a nuclear process called neutrinoless double beta decay theoretically possible. If the process does occur, it would mean that neutrinos are Majorana particles, which are their own antiparticles. Several experiments to detect this process are being performed, but positive results are still in doubt.
[References]
The Mass Question
Edward Witten
Nature, February 28, 2002, pp. 969-971: Very recent results from studies of neutrinoless double-beta deca suggest that lepton number may be very slightly violated in nature. Together with neutrino oscillation measurements, this implies all three neutrinos have about the same mass. If so, there would be important constraints on the origin of neutrino mass in grand unified theories.
The Unbearably Unstoppable Neutrino
Robert Kunzig
Discover, August 2001, pp. 33-41: Neutrinos are almost massless and hardly interact in any way with "normal" matter -- yet they may make up a larger percentage of the mass of the universe. Detecting and studying them is a formidable engineering challenge.
Detecting Massive Neutrinos
Edward Kearns, Takaaki Kajita, Yoji Totsuka
Scientific American, August 1999, pp. 64-71: Neutrino oscillation -- the conversion of a neutrino of one type into another -- implies neutrinos have mass. The Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan has detected convincing evidence that neutrino oscillations occur.
Catching Cosmic Ghosts
Ivan Semeniuk
Astronomy, June 1999, pp. 38-43: A variety of existing and future neutrino detectors not only provides new information on neutrinos themselves but also enables the investigation of cosmology through "neutrino astronomy".
Neutrino Oscillations
Kenji Kaneyuki, Kate Scholberg
American Scientist, May-June 1999, pp. 222-231: The phenomenon of neutrino oscillation (spontaneous conversion among electron, muon, and tau neutrinos) appears to have been confirmed by observations of neutrinos produced in cosmic ray events. The result implies that neutrinos have mass (not predicted by the Standard Model). This has significant implications for cosmology and the "solar neutrino problem".
Solar Neutrino Experiments: The Next Generation
John N. Bahcall, Frank Calaprice, Arthur B. McDonald, Yoji Totsuka
Physics Today, July 1996, pp. 30-36: Three large new solar neutrino detectors are scheduled to go into use in order to study the apparent deficiency of neutrinos generated by the Sun.
Neutrino Oscillations and Solar Neutrinos
Lincoln Wolfenstein; Eugene W. Beier
Physics Today, July 1989, pp. 28-36: Although the standard model assumes all neutrinos are massless, grand unified theories predict a nonzero neutrino mass. Such masses would be too small to measure directly, but the phenomenon of neutrino oscillation can give information indirectly.

Recommended references: Books

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