Neutrino geophysics at baksan: On searches for antineutrinos and radiogenic-heat sources in the interior of the earth

Antineutrinos produced in the Earth (geoneutrinos) carry information that is of crucial importance for the understanding of the origin and evolution of our planet. It is shown that the Baksan Neutrino Observatory of the Institute for Nuclear Research (Moscow, Russian Academy of Sciences) may become one of the best laboratories for studying geoneutrinos with the aid of a large scintillation spectrometer. The article also presents a brief history of the development of concepts of the Earth as a source of antineutrinos—it dates back to 1960, spanning a period of nearly 45 years (1960–2004).     

Detecting the Neutrino

In 1930 Wolfgang Pauli suggested that a new particle might be required to make sense of the radioactive-disintegration mode known as beta decay. This conjecture initially seemed impossible to verify since the new particle, which became known as the neutrino, was uncharged, had zero or small mass, and interacted only insignificantly with other matter. In 1951 Frederick Reines and Clyde L. Cowan, Jr., of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory undertook the difficult task of detecting the free neutrino by observing its inverse beta-decay interaction with matter. They succeeded in 1956. The neutrino was accepted rapidly as a fundamental particle despite discrepancies in reported details of the experiments and despite the absence of independent verification of the result. This paper describes the experiments, examines the nature of the discrepancies, and discusses the circumstances of the acceptance of the neutrino's detection by the physics community.     

Neutrino

Neutrinos are the only fundamental fermions which have no electric charges. Because of that neutrinos have no direct electromagnetic interaction and at relatively small energies they can take part only in weak processes with virtual W ^± and Z ⁰ bosons. Neutrino masses are many orders of magnitude smaller than masses of charged leptons and quarks. These two circumstances make neutrinos unique, special particles. The history of the neutrino is very interesting, exciting and instructive. We try here to follow the main stages of the neutrino history starting from the famous Pauli letter and finishing with the discovery and study of neutrino oscillations. Outstanding contribution to the neutrino physics of Bruno Pontecorvo is discussed in some details.     

On the Neutrino Millicharge

The neutrino luminosity of a degenerate electron gas in a strong magnetic field under conditions of the neutron-star crust owing to plasmon decay to a neutrino pair via a nonstandard mechanism associated with the hypothesized neutrino electric millicharge is calculated. Relative upper bounds on the magnitude of the millicharge are obtained from a comparison of the results of this calculation with the neutrino luminosity caused by the respective standard process and with the luminosity induced by the neutrino magnetic moment.     

Neutrino masses

A status report about experimental searches for neutrino masses is given. Direct mass experiments for the three different neutrino flavours are discussed. Under the assumption of neutrino mixing results of experiments looking for neutrino decay and distortions in spectra of weak decays are reported.     

Neutrino unification

Present neutrino data are consistent with neutrino masses arising from a common seed at some "neutrino unification" scale M(X). Such a simple theoretical ansatz naturally leads to quasidegenerate neutrinos that could lie in the electron-volt range with neutrino mass splittings induced by renormalization effects associated with supersymmetric thresholds. In such a scheme the leptonic analog of the Cabibbo angle straight theta(middle dot in circle) describing solar neutrino oscillations is nearly maximal. Its exact value is correlated with the smallness of straight theta(reactor). The two leading mass-eigenstate neutrinos present in nu(e) form a pseudo-Dirac neutrino, avoiding conflict with neutrinoless double beta decay.     

中微子质量矩阵和中微子转换矩阵间的一种可能的关系

我们探讨了以ν_e,ν_μ,ν_τ为基的, 具有一种新的对称性的中微子质量矩阵M. 首先在没有T(时间)破坏的前提下, 假定该质量矩阵具有一个简单的三参数形式. 这一矩阵确定了3种中微子的质量m₁, m₂, m₃以及使M对角化的转换矩阵U. 因为无T破坏的U给出3个可测量参数s₁₂, s₂₃, s₁₃, 我们的形式用3个参数表示6个可测量的物理量, 其结果与实验数据符合得很好. 更精确的测量将对模型给出严格的检验, 并确定这3个参数的值. 本文还推广讨论了包含T破坏的情况.     

Neutrino cosmology

We present a class of non-stationary cosmological solutions of coupled Einstein-Dirac equations which correspond to an Universe filled solely with neutrinos of right and/or left helicity.     

Neutrino superfluidity

It is shown that Dirac-type neutrinos display BCS superfluidity for any nonzero mass. The Cooper pairs are formed by attractive scalar Higgs boson exchange between left- and right-handed neutrinos; in the standard SU(2) x U(1) theory, right-handed neutrinos do not couple to any other boson. The value of the gap, the critical temperature, and the Pippard coherence length are calculated for arbitrary values of the neutrino mass and chemical potential. Although such a superfluid could conceivably exist, detecting it would be a major challenge.     

Neutrino Lensing

Due to the intrinsic properties of neutrinos, the gravitational lens effect for a neutrino should be more colorful and meaningful than the normal lens effect of a photon. Other than the experiments operated at terrestrial laboratory, in principle, we can propose a completely new astrophysical method to determine not only the nature of the gravity of lens objects but also the mixing parameters of neutrinos by analyzing neutrino trajectories near the central objects. However, the angular, energy and time resolution of the neutrino telescopes are still comparatively poor, so we just concentrate on the two classical tests of general relativity, i.e. the angular deflection and the time delay of the neutrino by a lens object as a preparative work in this paper. In addition, some simple properties of neutrino lensing are investigated.     

Neutrino cosmology

Cosmological data are reviewed questioning whether the universe may be open and dominated by neutrinos and gravitons rather than by baryons. The thermal history of the Lepton Era is investigated incorporating the effects of neutral currents, additional neutrinos, and a small neutrino mass. In the canonical version of Big Bang cosmology (equal numbers of neutrinos and antineutrinos), the neutrino number and energy density is, like that of photons, gravitationally insignificant unless the neutrino has a small mass (10 eV). The neutrino sea can be cosmologically significant if it is degenerate (so that the net leptonic or muonic charge is nonzero) with7×10 ⁵ neutrinos (or antineutrinos) per cm.³ This density homogeneously spread out is still so low that even the most energetic cosmic ray protons will not be stopped, even if neutral currents exist with the usual weak strength. If these degenerate neutrinos have a small mass (0.5 eV), they will condense into degenerate neutrino superstars of the size and mass of galactic clusters. If neutral currents make the (ev) (ev) coupling five times greater than what it is in V — A theory, nucleosynthesis commences a little earlier than conventionally assumed. This increases the cosmological He⁴ abundance predicted only slightly from Y= 0.27 to Y= 0.29. An appendix reviews the effect of neutral currents on neutrino processes in stars.Supported in part by the U.S.A.E.C.     

Neutrino Mixing in the BLMSSM

Abstract In recent years, a nonzero value for the neutrino mixing angle θ13 has been successively measured by the international famous reactor oscillation experiments, which is greater than 5 standard deviations. Our study is in the framework of the MSSM, where baryon and lepton numbers are local gauged symmetries （BLMSSM）. This model can generate three tiny neutrino masses at the tree level through TeV scale seesaw mechanism. In our paper, we analyze the neutrino masses and their corresponding mixing angles with a ＂top-down＂ method, assuming neutrino mass spectrum with normal ordering （NO） and inverted ordering （IO）.