Precision Studies of Neutrino Oscillations and Interactions

Neutrinos are the most abundant matter particle in the universe. As a fundamental particle, they can not be divided into smaller pieces. They also interact only via the Weak Force, meaning they can penetrate astronomical amounts of material without leaving a trace.

These three facts make neutrinos a unique and powerful probe to understand how nature works at the smallest scales. Neutrinos are also emerging as a new way to study objects in our universe that are either very far away or obscured by matter. The Standard Model of particle physics classifies the elementary particles into groups of related particles with similar quantum properties and describes the interactions amongst those particles.

With the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, physicists have found all the particles predicted by the Standard Model, and no other particles have been discovered. However, the model leaves open many questions about the universe, including the existential question of why an excess of matter over antimatter survived the early universe to form the structure of the observable universe.

The Standard Model also assumes neutrinos are massless, but we now know that neutrinos do have mass and because they do, they can change from one type to another. This observation tells us there must be more to the Standard Model. This award will provide detailed measurements of these changes as well as others form one of the most promising ways to look for new physics beyond the Standard Model.

This award will study neutrinos with data from the NOvA and MINERvA experiments. The group is also engaged in R&D for DUNE, the next generation, long-baseline neutrino experiment with detectors at Fermilab in Illinois and the Sanford Underground Laboratory in South Dakota. By engaging students in this research, we provide graduate and undergraduate students a vital component of their education and contribute to the development of the future technical workforce.

Beyond promoting science education at the college level, the group operates a successful Emerging Scholars program at a local elementary school. This ten-week, after-school program exposes students who are from communities historically underrepresented in the sciences to practicing physicists and exciting science activities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.