The Neutrino Saga Continues!
- Anna Oliva
- Jan 29, 2024
- 1 min read
(Picture of a neutrino interaction from the Fermilab Bubble Chamber)
With their 2023 collider detection and further discoveries, the once elusive particle appears to be increasingly easy to capture. Now, it is their even more “ghostly” as-of-yet theoretical cousin, the sterile neutrino, who is being relentlessly hunted. Sterile neutrinos, or long-lived heavy neutral leptons, are hypothetical very light particles who interact only through the force of gravity, unlike other particles that interact with one another through weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces. This lightness and limitation of interaction render it incredibly difficult to outright detect them.
Their existence was hypothesized in light of experimental data that hinted at the existence of another particle, like that of the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab or The Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) experiment at Los Alamos.
Another recent experiment gives an even stronger indication of the particle’s existence. Physicists at Baksan Experiment on Sterile Transitions irradiated liquid gallium with neutrinos to produce an isotope of germanium, germanium 71. However, the yield of germanium 71 was 20% lower than predicted, confirming an anomaly that strongly suggests the existence of sterile neutrinos.
The discovery of these neutrinos has the potential to shed light on several mysteries in particle physics, including the discrepancies between matter-antimatter asymmetry in our universe. All that’s left for us to do is find them!
On experimental hints towards new particles:
The experiment:
The implications of sterile neutrinos:
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