Talk 27.05.2019

Speaker: Jennifer Thomas
University College London, UK


Title: Neutrinos vs the human lifespan: Who will win?

Abstract:
Neutrino Oscillations have provided a new insight into the properties of neutrinos since their discovery almost 20 years ago. There are a number of experiments presently providing continuing new measurements pointing to a future direction in the field. One fundamental and overarching difficulty associated with any kind of measurements of neutrinos is that they only interact via the weak interaction, making their observation rather rare. This leads to very long wait times for results and the need for larger and larger detectors which eventually break the bank. It is time for a paradigm shift in the way neutrino physics is carried out, without the need for 1000 people for each experiment, sums of money that take your breath away and detectors that are so small they need 20 years to make the next fundamental step. I will give an introduction to the physics, the recent results in the field and then talk about the further future where we can make measurements quickly with huge detectors at a fraction of the cost of the presently planned next generation experiments.