Licentiate thesis: Phenomenological Studies of Neutrinos
by
Jessica Elevant(Stockholm University, Department of Physics)
→
Europe/Stockholm
FB54
FB54
Description
Since the proposal of its existence in 1930, the neutrino has continued
to amaze. Starting off as a solution to the lack of energy conservation in
beta decay, massive neutrinos have become a gateway to physics beyond the
standard model, and a complementary probe of various astrophysical sources.
Among the things we do know about neutrinos, we have their massive
nature, that their three flavour- and mass eigenstates do not coincice, and
that the neutrinos oscillate between flavours as they propagate. Among the
things we have yet to figure out in the realm of neutrino physics are for
example the neutrino’s possible Majorana nature, how neutrinos acquire their
mass, whether sterile neutrinos exist, whether neutrino oscillations break
CP-symmetry, whether neutrinos can help us understand the matter to antimatter
asymmetry, and whether neutrinos can help solve the mystery of the
particle nature of dark matter.
In this thesis we performed two phenomenological studies on neutrinos.
One focusing on learning more about the neutrino itself, namely the determination
of the oscillation parameters, in particular the CP phase. In the
other project, we focused on an application of a neutrino signal, namely as
a background to indirect dark matter searches. We updated the estimated
neutrino flux coming from cosmic ray interactions in the Sun.
