Experimental Neutrino Physics Group

RESEARCH TOPIC

The neutrino is the most abundant particle in our universe with no electric charge and as-yet-unmeasured masses. Despite their elusiveness, a lot of compelling evidence shows that neutrinos have non-zero masses and change from one flavor to another, a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation. Intense neutrino beams generated by particle accelerators are now being used in order to more precisely probe the physics of neutrino oscillations. The Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment recently set the most stringent constraint on the parameter that governs the breaking of the symmetry between matter and antimatter in neutrino oscillations. T2K achieved the 5-10% level of systematic uncertainty, however, it is not precise enough to discover the matter-antimatter symmetry-violation in neutrino oscillations. One of the largest limiting factors in any oscillation analysis comes from uncertainty on the neutrino interaction cross sections. Neutrino cross section measurements have in turn been limited by large uncertainty on the neutrino flux prediction which predominantly comes from hadron production. Under my research project, hadron production measurements will be conducted in collaboration with the NA61/SPS Heavy Ion and Neutrino Experiment (NA61/SHINE) at the CERN SPS collider. NA61/SHINE results will be applied to T2K's beam flux prediction. In parallel, studies for realizing a next neutrino generation experiment, the US-based Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), will be conducted. For DUNE, our group in particular focuses on two topics; hadron production measurements with NA61/SHINE to improve precision of the flux prediction and near detector development to host precision measurement of the neutrino interaction cross sections.

MEMBERS

CONTACT

Webpage of the research group: t2k-experiment.org, shine.web.cern.ch, www.dunescience.org