May 3, 2006 , 4:15 PM in Rock 301
Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics: What we have learned and what we would like to discover
Our knowledge of neutrino physics has undergone dramatic improvement in
the last few years. We are now in the position to make confident
predictions taking neutrino oscillations into account, opening the
possibility to search for truly exotic particle physics within the
neutrino sector, and to use neutrinos as reliable probes of
astrophysics and cosmology. However, some very fundamental questions
about neutrinos remain unanswered, such as whether their masses are of
Dirac or Majorana type, or what the absolute neutrino mass scale is
(oscillation experiments only reveal information about mass
differences). We discuss implications of neutrino mixing for
astrophysics and cosmology, and the way in which some of the
outstanding questions about neutrinos may be addressed.
Host: Tanmay Vachaspati