Thursday, Oct 25, 2012, 16:00
WHGA/001
S. Pascoli, Durham University
Abstract:
In the past ten years a series of experiments has confirmed that neutrinos can oscillate between different types (`flavors'), implying that they have mass. These results play a crucial role in our understanding of particle physics as they are the first solid evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model, with profound implications for the Universe and the laws which govern it. I will review the experimental results which indicate the existence of neutrino oscillations, including the recent discovery of the missing mixing angle θ13. I will then discuss their implications for our understanding of neutrino properties and the questions which we have to address in the coming future, from a phenomenological, theoretical, and cosmological point of view. A wide experimental program is underway or at the proposal stage, ranging from accelerator neutrino experiments such as T2K, NOvA, LBNE and LBNO, to low background searches such as neutrino less double beta decay. These experiments will provide us with necessary ingredients to search for the origin of neutrino masses and leptonic mixing. Neutrinos may be an open window on physics at energy scales which might not be directly accessed in any other way and which can have implications also for other lepton flavour violation searches, such as μ→eγ and μ→3e. The properties of this new physics beyond the standard model and its low energy phenomenological signatures and their complementarity and synergy will be briefly reviewed.