Departmental Colloquium

Neutrino Mixing and Results from the T2K Long Baseline Neutrino

Mark Hartz
University of Toronto

Time
Fri. November 4, 2011     1:30 PM     Stirling A

Abstract

The last 15 years have been an exciting time for neutrino physics as the standard model of neutrinos has evolved from massless particles to particles with very small mass and large mixing between neutrino flavors. Neutrino mixing has been observed in experiments that find neutrinos of a particular flavor can disappear after traveling some distance, interpreted as oscillations into other neutrino flavors. While much of the physics that governs oscillations has been determined, many outstanding questions remain, including whether neutrinos and anti-neutrinos mix in the same way, a question with important implications for the matter/anti-matter content of the universe. The T2K experiment produces a beam of muon neutrinos at the J-PARC facility on the east coast of Japan and measures the beam composition at the Super-Kamiokande detector located 295 km to the west. T2K searches for electron neutrino interactions at Super-Kamiokande that come from the oscillation of the muon neutrino beam to measure the remaining unknown neutrino mixing amplitude. This measurement is the first step in a physics program that may eventually determine if neutrinos and anti-neutrinos mix in the same way. In this talk, I will present results from T2K and discuss the future prospects for T2K as it recovers from the Japan earthquake and prepares to restart data taking.

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