RESEARCH REPORT

THE GHOST PARTICLE: NEUTRINO

JANHAVI SINGH(2301487)

KAJAL(2301488)

KHUSHI(2301490)

KRATIKA AGARWAL(2301491)

BHAVANA RAJPUT(2301476)

HARSHITA DHAKAD(2301484)

DAYALBAGH EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE

PHM282: APPLIED PHYSICS LAB

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ABSTRACT

It came from deep space, moving at the speed of light, and crashed
into Antarctica. Deep below the ice, it met its end. It wasn't an asteroid
or alien spacecraft, but a particle that rarely interacts with matter,
known as a neutrino.

Though theorized in the 1930s and first detected in the 1950s,

neutrinos maintain a mysterious aura, and are often dubbed "ghost
particles" -- they're not haunting or dangerous, but they just zip
through the Earth without us even noticing them. Oh, "and it's a cool
name," according to astrophysicist Clancy James at Curtin University
in Western Australia.

In recent years, ghost particles have been making headlines for all
sorts of reasons and not just because they have a cool name. That
Antarctic collision was traced to a black hole that shredded a star, for
instance, and other neutrinos seem to come via the sun. In early 2022,
physicists were able to directly pin down the approximate mass of a
neutrino -- a discovery that could help uncover new physics or break
the rules of the Standard Model.

Imagine if we actually captured a ghost and could say the specter was
of someone who had died. It would change everything we know about
the universe. A ghost particle is pretty much a big deal for the same
reason, and that's why astrophysicists are trying to trap them. They're
excited, and here's why you should be, too.
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WHAT IS A NEUTRINO?

In a nutshell, a neutrino is a fundamental, subatomic particle. Under

the Standard Model of particle physics it's classified as a "lepton."
Other leptons include electrons, the negatively charged particles that
make up atoms, with protons and neutrons. But look, if we get into all
that, we're going to go real deep on particle physics and it'll explode
our brains.

The neutrino is unique because it has a vanishingly small mass and

no electrical charge and it's found across the universe. "They are
made in the sun, in nuclear reactors, and when high-energy cosmic
rays smash into Earth's atmosphere," says Eric Thrane, an
astrophysicist at Monash University in Australia. They're also made by
some of the most extreme and powerful objects we know of, like
supermassive black holes and exploding stars, and they were also
produced at the beginning of the universe: the Big Bang.

Like light, they travel in basically a straight line from where they're
created in space. Other charged particles are at the mercy of
magnetic fields, but neutrinos just barrel through the cosmos without
impediment; a ghostly bullet fired from a monstrous cosmic gun.

And, as you read this, trillions of them are zipping through the Earth
and straight through you.
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THEY ARE CRASHING INTO US RIGHT NOW?

Yes, exactly. Every second of every day since the day you were born,
neutrinos have been moving through your body. You just don't know it
because they interact with hardly anything. They don't smash into the
atoms that make you up, and so you don't even know they're there.
Just like a shadowy spirit passing through a wall, the neutrino moves
right on through. Fortunately, there's no exorcism required.

BUT WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT NEUTRINOS?

Studying them for decades has thrown up a bit of a surprise for

scientists. Under the standard model, neutrinos shouldn't have any
mass. But they do.

The puzzle of the neutrino mass first came to light in the 1960s.
Scientists had suggested the sun should be producing what's known
as electron neutrinos, a particular type of the subatomic particle. But it
wasn't. This "solar neutrino problem" led to a breakthrough discovery:
that neutrinos can change flavor.

Like an almost-empty bag of Mentos, the ghost particle comes in just

three distinct flavors -- electron, muon and tau -- and they can change
flavor as they move through space (flavor is the actual terminology,
I'm not making that up for this analogy). For instance, an electron
neutrino might be produced by the sun and then be later detected as a
muon neutrino.

And such a change implies the neutrino does have mass. Physics tells
us they couldn't change flavor if they were massless. Now research
efforts are focused on elucidating what the mass is.
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In a study published in the prestigious journal Nature in February

2022, researchers revealed the mass of a neutrino to be incredibly
tiny (but definitely there). Physicists were able to show directly, using
a neutrino detector in Germany, that the maximum mass for a neutrino
is around eight-tenths of an electron volt (eV). That's an unfathomably
tiny mass, more than a million times "lighter" than an electron.

HOW DO YOU DETECT NEUTRINOS?

One of the key ingredients you need is space. Physical space, deep
underground. For great results, scientists have built their neutrino
detectors under meters of ice in Antarctica and, soon, at the bottom of
the ocean. This helps keep the data clean from any interference from
things like cosmic rays, which would bombard the sensitive detectors
at the surface. The detector in Antarctica, known as IceCube, is buried
about 8,000 feet straight down.

"Trapping" a ghost particle might not actually be the best terminology

for what these detectors are doing. IceCube, for instance, doesn't hold
any neutrinos prisoner. The particles mostly blast straight through the
detector. But on the way, some very (very!) rarely interact with the
Antarctic ice and produce a shower of secondary particles emitting a
type of blue light known as Cherenkov radiation. A range of light-
sensing spherical modules, vertically arranged like beads on a string,
pick up the light those particles emit. A similar detector exists in
Japan: Super-Kamiokande. This uses a 55,000 ton tank of water
instead of ice and is buried under Mount Ikeno.

Both are able to detect which direction the neutrino came from and its
flavor. And so, physicists can see signs the ghost particle was there,
but not the ghost particle itself. It's kind of like a poltergeist -- you can
see the way it interacts with chairs (throwing them at you) and lights
(menacingly switching them on and off), but you can't see the
phantom itself. Spooky!
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WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM NUETRINOS?

Neutrinos are a fundamental particle in our universe, which means

they underlie, in some way, everything that exists. Learning more
about neutrinos will help unlock some of the mysteries of physics.

"Particle physicists study neutrinos in order to look for clues for

physics beyond the Standard Model," says Thrane. He notes that
physicists want to understand if neutrinos violate some of the
fundamental laws of the Standard Model. "This may shed light on why
there's more matter than antimatter in the Universe," Thrane says,
noting that the problem has been referred to as one of the great
mysteries in physics.

We also know that extreme cosmic objects and events can produce
them. For instance, exploding stars, or supernovas, are known to
create neutrinos and shoot them across the universe. So are
supermassive black holes chomping on gas, dust and stars.

"Detecting neutrinos tells us about what is going on in these objects,"

says James.

Because they hardly interact with the surrounding matter, we could

use neutrinos to see these types of objects and understand them in
regions of the universe we can't study with other electromagnetic
wavelengths (like optical light, UV and radio). For example, scientists
could peer into the heart of the Milky Way, which is hard to observe in
other electromagnetic wavelengths because our view is interfered with
by gas and dust.

Reliable detection and tracing could stimulate an astronomy revolution

akin to the one we're currently seeing with gravitational waves.
Essentially, neutrinos can give us a whole new eye on the cosmos,
complementing our existing set of telescopes and detectors to reveal
what's going on in the void.
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TYPE OF NUETRINO: STERILE NUETRINO

I probably should've kept those under wraps, but seeing as you're

here, sterile neutrinos are a whole other class of neutrinos. They're
entirely theoretical, but scientists think they likely exist because of a
feature in physics known as chirality. Essentially, the normal neutrinos
we've been discussing are what some call "left-handed." So, some
physicists think there may be "right-handed" neutrinos -- sterile
neutrinos.

They give them this name because they don't interact with other
particles via the weak force, like normal neutrinos. They interact only
through gravity. These types of neutrinos are considered a candidate
for dark matter, the stuff that makes up more than a quarter of the
universe but that we've never seen.

That means neutrinos might also help answer another vexing puzzle
in physics: What, exactly, is dark matter? There are lots of candidates
for dark matter theorized by physicists, and there's still plenty to learn
-- it may not be related to neutrinos at all!
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FACTS ABOUT NEUTRINOS

1. Abundance of Neutrinos
Neutrinos are the second most abundant particles in the universe
after photons. The sun sends 65 billion neutrinos per second per
square centimeter to earth. So about 100 trillion of them pass
through the human body every second. The sun acts as a neutrino
factory. Sun produces energy in its core via nuclear fusion. The
nuclear reaction that takes place in the core of the Sun is known
as the PP chain. In this process, two protons come together and
form deuterium, giving off positrons and neutrinos (the electron
neutrinos).

2. The Mass of Neutrinos

One of the most astonishing facts about neutrinos is their mass.
When Pauli first gave his theory about the neutrinos, he assumed
them to be massless. But later, new theories were published that
assigned a small yet finite mass to these particles. According to
the latest report published in Scientific American, the upper limit
of neutrino mass is 0.086 electron volt, or
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000015 kilogram—
making it at least six million times lighter than an electron.
Despite being the lightest particles in the universe, they account to
20% of the total mass of the universe.

3. The Neutrino Oscillation

There are three types of neutrinos — or three flavors in technical

terms: the electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos.
As a neutrino travels along, it can switch in between these flavors,
acting like a chameleon changing colors. This is known as the
neutrino flavor oscillation: a phenomenon that solved the long
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standing solar neutrino puzzle.The concept of neutrino oscillation

has another important implication. Neutrinos change their flavor
with a particular frequency.

4. The Force of Interaction

There are four fundamental forces in nature: strong, weak,
electromagnetic and
gravitational force. Neutrinos are the only particles found to solely
interact through the weak force. Hence, they play a vital role in
digging into the details of the weak force. The behavior of
neutrinos and anti-neutrinos is important in the study of particle
physics.

5. Extent of Neutrino Interaction

Both photons and neutrinos are created inside the core of stars.
But while photons
take tens of thousands of years to reach the edge of the sun,
neutrinos make this trip in
just 3.2 seconds. This is because the latter interact quite feebly
with matter. Trillions of neutrinos pass right through the Earth
each second hardly interacting with it. This is one of the most
interesting facts about neutrinos.

6. Detection of Neutrinos
Neutrinos are hard to detect. On an average, only one neutrino
from the sun will interact
with a person’s body during his or her life time. The largest
neutrino detector in operation today is Super Kamiokande-III in
Japan.
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7. Role In Supernovae
These particles dissipate about 99% of the total supernova’s
energy. If Betelgeuse goes supernova today, Super Kamiokande-
III would detect an estimated 13 million neutrinos. So the
supernovae are very important astrophysical events to study the
properties of these ghostly particles. Neutrinos will act as a
warning signal before the supernova of Betelgeuse. The Earth will
be bombarded with a burst of neutrinos from Betelgeuse just
hours before the supernova. This will help us gain time to point
our telescopes at the exploding Betelgeuse.

8. Neutrinos and Dark Matter

These high velocity particles are also proposed candidate for hot
dark matter, as they do not emit or absorb light, making them
appear dark.

These interesting facts about neutrinos are what makes them the
ghost particles of the universe. Neutrinos are the hot topic of
research, both in astrophysics and particle physics. Neutrino
Astrophysics is an emerging field of scientific research and there
is a lot to discover.

Though we've been able to detect and trace

only a few neutrinos so far, the next decade
should see neutrino astronomy really take
off. The bottom line is that understanding
neutrinos, their flavors and masses, will
provide a window into the fundamental
nature of our universe.
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References

WIKIPEDIA, https://www.wikipedia.org/

CNET, https://www.cnet.com/
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