Neutrinos and neutrino oscillations: an experimental overview

by Barbara Caccianiga (INFN)

Tuesday 3 May 2016, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

FA31

After their first discovery by Cowan&Reines in 1958, elusive neutrinos have been extensively studied and are now much less mysterious than 50 years ago. However, there are still several missing pieces in the neutrino puzzle: the absolute neutrino masses and even their relative ordering (mass hierarchy) are unknown; we don't know whether CP is violated in the neutrino sector (which may have important implications on our understanding of baryogenesis and matter/anti-matter asymmetry); we don't know whether the three-flavour paradigm holds, or if instead there is one or more extra family of sterile neutrinos; we don't even know the neutrino nature: Majorana or Dirac? In this lecture I will review the current state-of-the-art on neutrino physics and the experimental strategy to complete the puzzle. In particular, I will focus on present and future oscillation experiments performed using different neutrino sources and techniques. These experiments are not sensitive to absolute neutrino masses and to Majorana phases, but have the potential to complete on a relatively short time scale (~15 years or so) the remaining part of the neutrino puzzle, i.e., neutrino mass hierarchy, CP violation (or conservation) and existence of one or more family of sterile neutrinos.