MPP Colloquium

Probing the Nature of Neutrinos

by Karsten Heeger (Yale)

Europe/Berlin
Description

The discovery of neutrino oscillation has shown that neutrinos have non-zero mass and opened the window to physics beyond the Standard Model. The observation of neutrino flavor transformation with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, the measurement of reactor neutrino oscillation with KamLAND, and the precise determination of theta13 with Daya Bay have enabled a wide range of oscillation experiments. Recent measurements of reactor neutrinos at short baseline with PROSPECT have resolved the reactor anomaly and constrained the existence of sterile neutrinos. Despite this remarkable progress, the nature of neutrino mass and the absolute mass scale remain unknown. Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is uniquely suited to probe the Majorana nature of neutrinos and determine the effective neutrino mass. CUORE, the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) and its upgrade CUPID aim to search for 0νββ down to the level of the inverted mass ordering using the world’s largest bolometric detector. Project 8 is a novel approach to make a direct measurement of the absolute neutrino mass using cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy. In this talk, I will present my work in the discovery of neutrino oscillations, describe the search for neutrinoless double beta decay with CUORE and CUPID, and discuss the prospect of measuring the neutrino mass with Project 8.