In an article published on Physicsworld.com (Perks, 2019), it is informed that a group of 90 researchers from 30 international research institutes proposed the construction of a facility which would allow to fire neutrinos from Protvino, Russia, to the coasts of Toulon, France, 2595 km away, where the Oscillation Research with Cosmics in the Abyss (ORCA) detector is being constructed. They defended this project, named P2O, by stating that it would allow to understand further properties of neutrinos and would explain why we have found way more matter than antimatter until now. In detail, they chose ORCA because this detector is optimized to detect neutrino oscillations between 2 GeV and 30 GeV and is intended to determine the neutrino mass ordering. Moreover, the 2595 km baseline, larger than any accelerator experiment currently operating or planned, would provide the first oscillation maximum at 5 GeV, which would then fall into the ORCA detector nominal range (Akindinov, et al., 2019). The project, however, would demand an upgrade in the current neutrino beamline at the accelerator in Protvino from the current 15kW beam power to at least 90 kW. In the letter (Akindinov, et al., 2019) the group explains how these issues can be overcome.
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How the Article is Related to the Course
Neutrinos are fundamental particles that can be produced by nuclear reaction or by particles acceleration like the proposed by the scientific group. They are affected by the weak nuclear force and the universal gravitational force. Their existence was demonstrated by the Cowan and Reines experiment in 1956. This experiment consisted on firing a neutron beam to pure water. Neutrinos have little interaction with matter and their estimated mass is about a millionth the mass of an electron. Neutrinos have three leptonic flavors, each one with its respective antiparticle. Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald measured in 2015 that neutrinos change their flavors as these particles travel through the space. This experiment awarded them the Nobel Prize of Physics for that year (Webb, 2015). Changes of flavor are called neutrino oscillations and they do not follow standard models, but rather present quantum physics nature.
The classic approach of physics of particles has already made many advances about the study of atomic structures and has demolished many myths about them like, for example, the behavior of electrons and their “cloudy” nature described on slide 8 of the Quantum Mechanics and Nuclear Physics class, instead of the former belief of a compact mass that orbits another compact mass like planets in a stellar system. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (slides 9-11) led to develop theories that later have been proved true like the existence of neutrinos and antiparticles. Neutrinos are typically generated by nuclear reaction in the core of the stars, but this process requires a huge amount of energy which cannot be stored anywhere in the Earth. So particles acceleration is the reasonable way to generate them.
Personal Reflection
When I first read the term “maximum oscillation” in the article, I could not avoid to think about it as the amplitude of a wave. Then I searched on the Hyper-Kamiokande site (What is a Neutrino?) and there is exhibited the following paragraph:
“Neutrinos exhibit the properties of a particle as well as a wave. Therefore, neutrino1, neutrino2 and neutrino3, each with different mass eigenstates, travel through space as waves that have a different frequency. The flavor of a neutrino is determined as a superposition of the mass eigenstates. The type of the flavor oscillates, because the phase of the wave changes. This phenomenon is called neutrino oscillation. Neutrino oscillation occurs when neutrinos have mass and non-zero mixing”.
So neutrino oscillation refers to the change of wave phase (which is called Lepton number) and not to any changes of wave amplitude.
Creation of P2O and its functioning would allow to better understand the beginning of the Universe. It would show why antiparticles fail to conform a greater “antiobject”. As the foundations of Quantum Physics impulse the development of other scientific and mathematical areas such as Probability, the study of neutrino oscillation would also develop another mathematical concepts as well like in Category Theory. Although social effects are not immediate if successful, the only fact that the underground corridor crosses eight countries would turn people’s heads to the developing of the project and would raise awareness about how far Physics is going without even needing to go so far.
This proposal showed me that Quantum Physics is a recent discipline that needs a community to be studied. Short advances may be obtained by one person alone. Investment in science is an expensive luxury but the gain with the results really worth it. The findings in science, and particularly in Physics, have modeled the way of seeing things since the foundations of scientific method. Passing through the study of classic dynamics and cinematics from the Renaissance, which led to the development of Differential Calculus, the better understanding of Thermodynamics, then to the several formulations of the structure of the atom, which then were improved by the observations of the light and its nature as both an electromagnetic wave and a particle; then the experimentation in smaller things each time, giving raise to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that gives the arbitrarily small objects the property of not being accurately measured and just providing a probability for this measure; and now the atomic reactions that produce symmetrical and opposed particles which could suggest the existence of opposed matter somewhere and sometime in the Universe-time space, which can be thought as a totally different approach of Energy’s Conservation Law. People can only appreciate the advance of things when looking back and the study of Physics is not the exception. I see in this proposal a gold opportunity to witness a relevant discover in Quantum Physics and it would be a great achievement to come to understand the outcome.
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References
Akindinov, A. V., Anassontzis, E. G., Anton, G., Aublin, J., Baret, B., Bertin, V., . . . Zaitsev, A. M. (2019, February 16). Letter of Interest for a Neutrino Beam from Protvino to KM3NeT/ORCA. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.06083
Perks, S. (2019, February 22). Physicists propose huge European neutrino facility – Physics World. Retrieved from https://physicsworld.com/a/physicists-propose-huge-european-neutrino-facility/
Webb, J. (2015, October 06). Neutrino ‘flip’ wins physics Nobel Prize. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34443695
What is a Neutrino? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hyper-k.org/en/neutrino.html