Art. 05 – Vol. 25 – No. 3 – 2015

Roman CHIRILĂ
roman.chirila@ici.ro

National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics – ICI Bucharest

Abstract: The neutrino metamorphosis process consists of the incredible transformation of one type of neutrino into another one along the way. In the particle physics it is known as „oscillation” phenomenon which is a strong evidence that neutrino particles have mass, therefore they can oscillate, i.e. they can change their identities and implicitly their nature. Unlike other types of particles, neutrino has dual identities: it can be one of three flavor (νe, νμ, ντ) and have one of three masses (ν1, ν2, ν3) but a given flavor does not imply a given mass, or vice versa. Exactly how much mass they have is still unknown. The larger question, however, is why the neutrinos have mass at all and what about their extrem smallness mass values. In the Standard Model developed by physicists in order to explain the Universe, neutrinos are massless particles. Thus, it is absolutely necessary to improve this model, to add new data results and explanations which could have deeper implications in astrophysics, cosmology or nature of physics itself. The present paper is a short review about the quantum aspects of the neutrinos oscillation process but about several experiments related to the neutrino identity changing too. Furthermore, neutrinos seem to be at the heart of a larger mystery: why we live in a universe made of matter and not antimatter?

Keywords: neutrino, neutrinos oscillation, Dirac neutrino, Majorana neutrinos, seesaw mechanism.

REFERENCES

1. BARGER, V.; MARFATIA, D.; WHISNANT, K. L.: The Physics of Neutrinos. Princeton University Press, 2012.
2. WINTER, K.: Neutrino Physics. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
3. CLOSE, F.: Neutrino. Oxford University Press, 2010.
4. GRIFFITHS, D. J.: Introduction to Elementary Particles, Wiley, John & Sons Inc., 1987.

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