PSILOGO

Laboratory for Particle Physics (LTP)


LTP Colloquium

First observation of reactor anti-neutrino flux disappearance in KamLAND

Friday, June 13, 2003, 16:00
WHGA Auditorium

Prof. Y. Kamyshkov, Univ. Tennessee

Abstract:
Since the first detection of anti-neutrinos by F.Reines and C.L. Cowan fifty years ago (Nobel prize awarded to F. Reines for detection of the neutrino in 1995) many efforts have been made to measure as well as to predict theoretically the anti-neutrino fluxes from fission reactors. Good agreements at the level of a few percent between calculations and measurements have been established when experiments were performed at small (~1 km or less) distances from the reactors. For the first time in the KamLAND experiment, where average distance between reactor and detector is ~ 180 km, the "disappearance" of anti-neutrino flux was observed. We will discuss the significance of this result in relation to neutrino masses and to the explanation of the long-standing problem of the lack of Solar neutrinos. Other physics pursued by KamLAND Collaboration will be also discussed in this talk.