ACCELERATOR AND REACTOR NEUTRINO EXPERIMENTS

Abstract

Since the first detection of the neutrino at reactors [1] and the discovery of the νμ at the Brookhaven AGS [2], accelerators and reactors have been used to provide intense beams of neutrinos. Over the last 30 years, experiments with neutrino beams have played a major role in shaping the Standard Model of particle physics as it is known today. At present, electroweak theory is more conveniently studied at high energy hadron and electron colliders where the W and Z bosons are directly produced and their properties can be studied in great detail. Nevertheless, experiments with neutrino beams continue to play a major role in particle physics by addressing other crucial questions: are neutrinos massive? do they mix? The search for neutrino oscillations is presently the most promising method to search for very small neutrino masses. The hypothesis of neutrino mixing postulates that the three known neutrino flavors, νe, νμ, and ντ , are not mass eigenstates but quantum-mechanical superpositions of three mass eigenstates, ν1, ν2, and ν3, with mass eigenvalues m1, m2, and m3, respectively: να = ∑