REU Project ID 5.2
Nuclear Physics

Introduction to Neutrino Oscillations in Matter

Prof. Wick Haxton

The discovery of neutrino oscillations requires neutrinos to be massive, and the small scale of neutrino mass is suggestive of new physics residing at energy scales far beyond the Standard Model.

The project will include reading about the solar and atmospheric neutrino problems (the first evidence for neutrino oscillations), calculating and graphically displaying vacuum neutrino oscillation probabilities, and evaluating how oscillation probabilities change in the presence of matter. A solid background in undergraduate quantum mechanics and some facility with Mathematica or other computational tools is required.