| TRACK: | Matter at Minute Dimensions |
| TITLE: | Neutrinos Observed: The Physics of Nature's Most Elusive Particle |
| DATE: | Sunday, February 15, 2004 |
| TIME: | 2:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. |
| ORGANIZERS: | Peter Rosen, U.S. Department of Energy; Wick Haxton, University of Washington |
| PARTICIPANTS: | |
| Boris Kayser (Speaker),Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory: The Physics of Neutrinos |
| Henry Sobel (Speaker),University of California: Observing Neutrinos Deep Underground |
| Janet Conrad (Speaker),Columbia University: Observations with Accelerator Neutrinos |
| John Wilkerson (Speaker), University of Washington: Solar Neutrinos - The Dawning of a Nu Era |
| Edward Kolb (Speaker),The University of Chicago: Neutrinos in Cosmology and Astrophysics |
| | |
| The neutrino has been a mysterious particle ever since Wolfgang Pauli proposed its existence in the 1930's as a desperate remedy to save the general principle of the conservation of energy in the radioactive process of nuclear beta decay. This new particle, named by Enrico Fermi, carries no electric charge, is very much lighter than the beta ray, or electron, and passes through matter almost without interacting with it. Nevertheless, it provides profound insights into the properties of the fundamental forces of Nature, and serves as a messenger from the deep interior of the sun, stars, and supernovae. The past five years have seen remarkable advances in our knowledge of neutrino properties which have been recognized by the award of the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physics. Underground observations of atmospheric, solar, and reactor neutrinos demonstrate that the long suspected phenomenon of neutrino oscillations from one variety, or flavor, to another does indeed take place. Accelerator generated neutrinos will be used to make precision measurements of neutrino properties. The ultimate outcome will be a complete phenomenological description of neutrino behavior. This description may well provide important clues about physics at the Planck scale of high energies and short distances, and about the actual structure of unified theories of the fundamental forces of Nature. The symposium weaves the experimental and theoretical fronts of neutrino physics together to create a picture of the interplay between intrinsic neutrino behavior, the corresponding implications for particle physics, and the information that neutrinos bring us from the cosmos and the stars. |
Boris Kayser is an overtly enthusiastic particle physics theorist who has been particularly interested in the physics of neutrinos and the asymmetry between matter and anti-matter. An author of well over 100 scientific papers, he is also co-author of a popular slender book on neutrino physics and a frequent, enthusiastic speaker on particle physics. He earned a B.S. in physics from Princeton in 1960. He received a Ph.D. in particle physics from CalTech. For nearly three decades, Kayser served as Program Director for Theoretical Physics at the National Science Foundation, in which capacity he was instrumental in establishing the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. He joined the staff of Fermilab in October 2001, with the title of Fermilab distinguished scientist to spend full time on his first love -- physics research.
Lecture Summary and Slides
Hank Sobel
Hank Sobel is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in 1968 working with Fred Reines at the Case Institute of Technology. His work concentrates on the study of neutrinos and their properties and the search for proton decay. He did his thesis work in a gold mine in South Africa where the neutrinos produced in our atmosphere were first observed. His subsequent experiments include the first observation of neutrino-electron elastic scattering, the first observation of neutrinos from a supernova, and the discovery of neutrino mass through the observation of atmospheric neutrino oscillations. He is presently the U.S. co-spokesman of the Super-Kamiokande experiment.
Lecture Summary and Slides
Janet Conrad
Janet Conrad is an associate professor of physics at Columbia
University. She received a M.Sc. from Oxford University (1987) and a
Ph.D. from Harvard (1993). Her present area of research is neutrino
oscillation physics. She is cospokesperson of the MiniBooNE
Experiment, located at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in
Illinios. She has received numerous awards for her work in neutrino
physics, including the President's Early Career Award for Scientists
and Engineers and the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award from the American
Physical Society. She is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and a
Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Lecture Summary
John Wilkerson
John Wilkerson is a Professor in the Department of Physics and an Associate Vice Provost for Research at the University of Washington. He earned his B.S. and his Ph.D. in physics at the University of North Carolina. His research interests include experimental neutrino physics as well as tests of fundamental symmetries. He is currently involved in two solar neutrino measurements, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and the Russian American Gallium Experiment and is spokesman for the emiT experiment, a test of time-reversal symmetry in neutron beta decay. He is involved in developing next generation experiments to directly probe neutrino mass including the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment and the proposed Majorana Collaboration's germanium based double beta decay experiment.
Lecture Summary and Slides
Rocky Kolb
Edward W. Kolb (known to most as Rocky) is a founding head of the
NASA/Fermilab Astrophysics Group at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
and a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The University of
Chicago. Kolb is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was the recipient of
the 2003 Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers and
the 1993 Quantrell Prize for teaching excellence at the University of
Chicago. His book for the general public, Blind Watchers of the Sky,
received the 1996 Emme Award of the American Aeronautical Society.
The field of Rocky's research is the application of elementary-particle
physics to the very early Universe. In addition to over 200 scientific
papers, he is a co-author of The Early Universe, the standard textbook on
particle physics and cosmology.
Lecture Slides
Page updated on 6 March 04--
The lectures slides of all talks are linked in this page.
Agenda
Sunday Feb 15, 2:30 pm
Sheraton 2nd Floor- West Ballroom B
chair : Maria Spiropulu