Precision Studies of Neutrino Oscillations and Interactions

世纪的主要学术成就之一是粒子物理学标准模型（SM）的发展。该模型成功地将当时已知的所有基本粒子分类为具有相似量子特性的组的层次结构。迄今为止，该模型的有效性最近在欧洲核子研究中心大型强子对撞机上发现的希格斯玻色子中得到了证实。然而，目前存在的标准模型留下了许多关于宇宙的问题，包括为什么希格斯质量具有它的价值以及为什么宇宙中没有反物质等基本问题。对于这些和其他关于宇宙的开放性问题，宇宙是如何形成的，为什么会是这样，寻找答案的一个主要领域是专注于中微子性质的研究，并利用我们所知道的和可以学到的关于中微子的知识作为标准模型之外的科学探针。中微子是那些基本粒子，在宇宙中几乎不与其他任何东西相互作用。它们不带电荷，曾经被认为是无质量的。像其他基本粒子一样，它们被认为有一个反物质对应物，反中微子。此外，标准模型预测，实际上有三种不同类型的中微子，它们可以通过不同的相互作用来区分，无论何时发生相互作用。但是最近的测量已经完全改变了我们对中微子的看法。我们现在知道中微子确实有质量，因为它们有质量，它们实际上可以从一种类型变成另一种类型。这些变化的详细测量，沿着其他当前的中微子实验，形成了探索超越标准模型（BSM）的新物理学的最有前途的方法之一，也是本研究的主题。该研究将涉及两名博士后研究人员以及研究生和本科生的工作。该奖项支持使用费米国家加速器实验室（FNAL）的中微子束进行三个相关中微子实验的工作：MINERvA、Nova和MINOS+所有测量中微子振荡：μ子中微子到电子中微子的跃迁。为了正确测量这些跃迁，需要精确的中微子相互作用知识。该奖项将用于测量（使用MINERvA探测器）在FNAL可用的广泛能量范围内的这些相互作用。这将提高我们对中微子通量的认识，对未来的短基线（FNAL源附近的探测器）和长基线（数百公里外的探测器）实验以及当前的Nova实验都很有用。MINOS+实验的工作将有助于绘制出中微子振荡概率的能量依赖性的形状，这可能揭示中微子部门的新异常。BSM提出的一些现象，从无菌中微子到额外维度，可以在4- 10 GeV范围内引起中微子振荡概率的可测量偏差。

One of the major intellectual achievements of the 20th century was the development of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. This model succeeded in classifying all of the elementary particles known at the time into a hierarchy of groups having similar quantum properties. The validity of this model to date was recently confirmed by the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. However, the Standard Model as it currently exists leaves open many questions about the universe, including such fundamental questions as to why the Higgs mass has the value it has and why there is no antimatter in the universe. A primary area to search for answers to these and other open questions about the universe, how it came to be and why it is the way it is, is to focus on a study of the properties of neutrinos and to use what we know and can learn about neutrinos as probes of science beyond the Standard Model. Neutrinos are those elementary particles that interact with practically nothing else in the universe. They have no electric charge and were once thought to be massless. Like other elementary particles, they were believed to have an antimatter counterpart, the antineutrino. Moreover, the Standard Model predicted that there were actually three different kinds of neutrinos that were distinguishable through the different interactions that they did undergo whenever there was an interaction. But recent measurements have totally changed our picture of neutrinos. We now know that neutrinos do have a mass and because they do, they can actually change from one type to another. Detailed measurements of these changes, along with other current neutrino experiments, form one of the most promising ways to probe for new physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM), and are the subject of this investigation. This research will involve the work of two post-doctoral researchers as well as graduate and undergraduate students.This award supports work, using the neutrino beam at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), on three related neutrino experiments: MINERvA, Nova and MINOS+ all measuring neutrino oscillations: muon neutrino to electron neutrino transitions. To correctly measure these transitions, precise knowledge of neutrino interactions is required. This award will be used to measure (using the MINERvA detector) these interactions across a wide energy range available at FNAL. This will improve our knowledge of the neutrino flux, useful for future Short Baseline (detector near the source at FNAL) and Long Baseline (detector hundreds of kilometers away) experiments as well as the current Nova experiment. The work on the MINOS+ experiment will help map out the shape of the energy dependence of the neutrino oscillation probability, which could reveal new anomalies in the neutrino sector. A number of BSM proposed phenomena, from sterile neutrinos to extra dimensions, can cause measurable deviations in the neutrino oscillation probability in the 4-10GeV range.