Introduction to Neutrino Physics

Overview

This course aims to show you what neutrinos are, their history, and how they can be crucial to understand our universe. A very important problem nowadays is the asymmetry between matter and antimatter. We are made of matter and exist because of this asymmetry. We don’t understand this imbalance and neutrinos can be a very useful insight. We will cover this and see how this research is also very useful to society.

Syllabus

Presentation and Module 1 (Motivation for high energy physics and neutrino physics)

In this course we are going to see most relevant aspects about neutrinos, very interesting but elusive particles. One important part will be to understand better matter-antimatter asymmetry in our universe and how neutrinos can be a useful insight for this. The tool to address this will be Neutrino Oscillations, which was the topic for a Nobel Prize in 2015. We will cover many other aspects, for exemple how research in Neutrino Field and High Energy Physics in general is relevant not only to understand better our universe but also for useful applications in Society.

Origin of Neutrinos

In this module we show how neutrinos can come from diferent sources: Big Bang, sun, atmosphere, accelerators, supernovae, cosmos, ... We explain basic characteristics of these diferent neutrinos and finish with another practical exercise on the principle of detection for Water Cherenkov Detectors.

Neutrinos in the Standard Model

In this module we present the basic theory in fundamental physics, the Standard Model and we see how neutrinos are related with each of the fundamental forces: electromagnetism, strong force and weak force. We also introduce the concepts of helicity and chirality and discuss the relation with neutrinos.

Neutrino Oscillations

In this module we discuss the important concept of neutrino oscillations. In order to this we introduce eigenstates, the PMNS matrix and the concept of oscillation probability. We apply all this to the practical case of DUNE.

Detection of Neutrinos

In this module we see basic notions for neutrino detection. We present some examples of near detectors in the Kamioka projects and the case of NOvA and DUNE. We finish with the important concept of cross-section and its application to the detection of solar neutrinos with Super-Kamiokande.

Future in Neutrino Field

In this module we discuss future ares for neutrino field: matter-antimatter asymmetry, prospects for neutrino mass determination, importance of neutrino research in the search for Physics Beyond the Standard Model, relevance of neutrinos in Astrophysics and Cosmology, and some basic notions about Applications in Science and Technology.