Bochum 2009 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Hadronen und Kerne

HK 65: Plenary VII

HK 65.2: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2009, 09:30–10:00, Audi-Max

Neutrino Mass and Oscillations — •Christian Weinheimer — Institut für Kernphysik, University of Münster, Germany

Experiments with atmospheric, solar, reactor and accelerator neutrinos have clearly demonstrated, that neutrinos from one flavor eigenstate can oscillate into another flavor eigenstate on the way from the neutrino source to the detector. Recently, new evidence came from the experiments BOREXINO with solar neutrinos and from MINOS with accelerator neutrinos. The origin of these neutrino oscillations are non-zero neutrino masses and non-trivial neutrino mixings, similar to the quark mixing described by the CKM-matrix. These neutrino properties beyond the Standard Model of particle physics do not play only an important role in nuclear and particle physics (e.g. in differentiation between theories beyond the Standard Model) but also in astrophysics (e.g. in super novae explosions) and cosmology (e.g. in structure formation). Two out of three neutrino mixing angles are determined to be maximum or large, respectively. Currently, one main focus is, whether the third mixing angle θ₁₃ is non-zero, which allows CP violation in the lepton sector. The other main focus is the determination of the neutrino mass scale. Since oscillation experiments can only determine differences between squared neutrino masses, this has to be done by direct neutrino mass experiments (KATRIN, MARE) or the search for the neutrinoless double beta decay (e.g. GERDA, CUORE, NEMO). In this talk the recent results from neutrino oscillation experiments and the status of direct neutrino mass and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments will be presented.