Thursday, June 2, 2016, 16:00
WHGA Auditorium
Michael Kobel, TU Dresden
Abstract: The discovery of neutrino oscillations has established that neutrinos have non-zero masses, revealed a surprisingly democratic 3-flavor mixing matrix and led to Nobel Prizes in the years 2002 and 2015. However, the analytical mathematical formula of 3-flavor neutrino-oscillations are lengthy and not easy to digest.
Completely analogous oscillations occur for three mechanical pendulums
coupled in a suitable manner. A mechanical setup of 3 such pendulums
will be presented, which is able to demonstrate all effects of neutrino
oscillation for atmospheric neutrinos, reactor neutrinos and solar
neutrinos, including the MSW matter effect in the sun. The model is
adjustable for showing the influence of varying the mass differences or
the mixing angles of the neutrinos. It gives a visual impression, how
close the neutrino mixing pattern actually is to a family-symmetric
tri-bi-maximal mixing.