U.S.-Taiwan Cooperative Research: A Pilot Experiment on Neutrino Oscillation

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

9618452 Chang This is a 12 month award proposed by Drs. George C.C. Chang and Chung Yun Chang, the University of Maryland, collaborating with Drs. P.K. Deng and Shih-Chang Lee, Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and sixteen other researchers from the Taiwan National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan University, Nanjing University (China), Institute of High Energy Physics of Chinese Academy of Science. Drs.George C.C. Chang and Chung Yun Chang request funds for travel and communication to carry out the pilot experiment on neutrino oscillation using anti-neutrino particles generated by the Taiwan nuclear power plants. neutrino is one of the elementary particles in particle and astro-physics. Neutrino oscillation may provide the information for many fundamental questions in physics, such as whether neutrinos have finite masses or different masses for different neutrino flavor transitions. This study addresses a very important fundamental question in physics. The Taiwan National Science Council will provide $200,000 for the first year of this experiment and one million dollars per year for next four years if the initial experiment proves to be promising. It is an exploratory project with potential major scientific payoff. The majority of the laboratory and research cost will be provided by the Taiwan National Science Council and the Taiwan Power Company. If successful, experimental results may lead to answers to questions on fundamental properties of neutrinos and to cosmological puzzles such as the deficit of solar neutrinos and the properties of dark matter. The project is jointly supported by the Taiwan National Science Council and the NSF. ***