Atmospheric neutrinos and discovery of neutrino oscillations

Neutrino oscillation was discovered through studies of neutrinos produced by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere. These neutrinos are called atmospheric neutrinos. They are produced as decay products in hadronic showers resulting from collisions of cosmic rays with nuclei in the atmosphere. Electron-neutrinos and muon-neutrinos are produced mainly by the decay chain of charged pions to muons to electrons. Atmospheric neutrino experiments observed zenith-angle and energy dependent deficit of muon-neutrino events. Neutrino oscillations between muon-neutrinos and tau-neutrinos explain these data well. Neutrino oscillations imply that neutrinos have small but non-zero masses. The small neutrino masses have profound implications to our understanding of elementary particle physics and the Universe. This article discusses the experimental discovery of neutrino oscillations.     

Search for muon to electron neutrino oscillations

A search for _e and oscillations has been carried out with the CHARM II detector exposed to the CERN wide band neutrino beam. The data were collected over five years, alternating beams mainly composed of muon-neutrinos and muon-antineutrinos. The number of interactions of _e and observed is comparable with the number of events expected from flux calculations. For large squared mass differences the upper limits obtained on the mixing angle aresin ²2 < 9.4=" ·=">^–3 for oscillating to _e andsin ²2 < 4.8=" ·=">^–3 for to , at the 90% confidence level. Combining neutrino and antineutrino data the upper limit is 5.6 · 10^–3.On leave of absence from ITEP (Moscow)     

Discovery of atmospheric neutrino oscillations**

Atmospheric neutrinos are produced by cosmic ray interactions in the atmosphere. The zenith‐angle and energy dependence of the muon‐ and electron‐ neutrino events are observed in atmospheric neutrino experiments. Through these studies neutrino oscillations were discovered. In this article, studies of atmospheric neutrinos in the Kamiokande and Super‐Kamiokande experiments are described.     

Study of atmospheric neutrino oscillations in ANTARES

The potential of the ANTARES 0.1 km² detector for the study of the atmospheric neutrino oscillations is discussed.     

Nearly mass-degenerate Majorana neutrinos: Double-beta decay and neutrino oscillations

Assuming equal tree-level Majorana masses for the standard-model neutrinos, either from the canonical seesaw mechanism or from a heavy scalar triplet, I discuss how their radiative splitting may be relevant to neutrinoless double-beta decay and neutrino oscillations.     

Majorana mass term,Dirac neutrinos and selective neutrino oscillations

In a theory of neutrino mixing via a Majorana mass term involving only the left-handed neutrinos there exist selection rules for neutrino oscillations if true Dirac and/or exactly zero mass eigenstates are present. In the case of three neutrino flavours no oscillation is allowed if the mass spectrum contains one Dirac and one nondegenerate Majorana massive neutrino. The origin of these selection rules and their implications are discussed and the number of possible CP-violating phases in the lepton mixing matrix when Dirac and Majorana mass eigenstates coexist is given.     

Probing possible decoherence effects in atmospheric neutrino oscillations

It is shown that the results of the Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino experiment, interpreted in terms of nu(mu)<-->nu(tau) flavor transitions, can probe possible decoherence effects induced by new physics (e.g., by quantum gravity) with high sensitivity, supplementing current laboratory tests based on kaon oscillations and on neutron interferometry. By varying the (unknown) energy dependence of such effects, one can either obtain strong limits on their amplitude or use them to find an unconventional solution to the atmospheric nu anomaly based solely on decoherence.     

New MACRO results on atmospheric neutrino oscillations

The final results of the MACRO experiment on atmospheric neutrino oscillations are presented and discussed. The data concern different event topologies with average neutrino energies of ～3 and ～50 GeV. Multiple Coulomb scattering of the high-energy muons in absorbers was used to estimate the neutrino energy of each event. The angular distributions, the L/E_ν distribution, the particle ratios, and the absolute fluxes all favor ν_π?ν_τ oscillations with maximal mixing and Δm²=0.0023 eV². A discussion is made on the Monte Carlos used for the atmospheric neutrino flux. Some results on neutrino astrophysics are also briefly discussed.     

Vectorlike weak currents,massive neutrinos,and neutrino beam oscillations

If the weak currents are vectorlike, the neutrinos will not be massless, and there will exist weak mixing angles for leptons, analogous to the Cabibbo angle for hadrons. Neutrino beams will oscillate in a similar way as K_o-beams. The failure to observe a solar neutrino flux at the theoretically predicted rate can be interpreted as the consequence of these oscillations.     

Cosmic-ray muon and atmospheric neutrino fluxes at very high energies

Estimates of cosmic-ray muon and atmospheric neutrino fluxes at TeV energies are obtained taking into account a “prompt” production of muons and neutrinos through charmed-particle decays and a “direct” lepton-pair production through the Drell-Yan mechanism and resonances. It is found that the contribution of charmed particles to the muon flux is equal to that from the conventional sources (pion and kaon decays) at 60 TeV, and the same equality can take place at 10 and 1 TeV for muon and electron neutrinos, respectively (for particles coming to sea level in the vertical direction). This “direct” production contribution to muon and neutrino fluxes is estimated very arbitrarily, but it cannot be excluded that this contribution is equal to that from the conventional source at energies of 0.5 and 0.05 PeV for muons and muon neutrinos, respectively. Currently, the estimates of the “prompt” and the “direct” contributions to cosmic-ray muons and atmospheric neutrinos are only qualitative. This is true especially for the “direct” contribution. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to attract attention to these potentially important sources of atmospheric muons and neutrinos.     

Democratic approach to atmospheric and solar neutrino oscillations

Working with a flavor symmetry, we show how the hierarchical structure in the charged fermion sector and a democratic approach for neutrinos that yields large solar and atmospheric neutrino mixings can be simultaneously realized in the MSSM framework. However, in SU(5) due to the unified multiplets we encounter difficulties. Namely, democracy for the neutrinos leads to a wrong hierarchical pattern for charged fermion masses and mixings. We discuss how this is overcome in flipped SU(5).     

Evidence for an oscillatory signature in atmospheric neutrino oscillations

Muon neutrino disappearance probability as a function of neutrino flight length L over neutrino energy E was studied. A dip in the L/E distribution was observed in the data, as predicted from the sinusoidal flavor transition probability of neutrino oscillation. The observed L/E distribution constrained nu(micro)<-->nu(tau) neutrino oscillation parameters; 1.9x10(-3)0.90 at 90% confidence level.