Recent N3AS Undergraduate Researchers (continued)

Henry Purcell, Former student;
Intern, NASA Ames Research Center

Publication accepted by Physical Review D (May 2024)
by Henry Purcell, Sherwood Richers, Amol V. Patwardhan, Francois Foucart:
Three-flavor, Full Momentum Space Neutrino Spin Oscillations in Neutron Star Mergers →

In the presence of anisotropic neutrino and antineutrino fluxes, the quantum kinetic equations drive coherent oscillations in neutrino helicity, frequently referred to as spin oscillations. These oscillations depend directly on the absolute mass scale and Majorana phase, but are usually too transient to produce important effects. In this paper we present a full momentum-space analysis of Majorana neutrino spin oscillations in a snapshot of a three-dimensional neutron star merger simulation. We find an interesting angular dependence that allows for that resonant and adiabatic oscillations to occur along specific directions in a large volume of the merger remnant… read more

Graduated 2023, currently training in Los Alamos, working with the DUNE team

Discovering the origin of neutrino’s mass and their oscillation parameters could answer the matter antimatter asymmetry in our universe, and allow us to better understand astrophysics phenomena. Currently, multiple flagship experiments exploring neutrinos are underway, and to have full confidence in their results, accurate and precise neutrino nucleus cross sections are required. My project is to analyze data from lattice QCD calculations to determine one of these cross sections.