New Findings Particle Physics Experiments

Results prestigious  physics experiment involving a University of Michigan professor seems to confirm the strange discovery 20 years who guide the existence of a new elementary particle that is the fourth aspect of neutrinos.

The new results further explain a violation of fundamental symmetry of the universe which states that particles of antimatter behave in the same way as materials balancer. Similarly, as reported by Physorg.

Neutrinos are neutral elementary particles produced in the radioactive decay of other particles. "Aspects" are known from electron neutrino is a neutral balance and its relatives are heavier muon and tau. Without taking into account aspects of the origin of neutrinos, particles are constantly changing from one type to another in a phenomenon called "neutrino oscillation aspects".

An electron neutrino might become a muon neutrino, and then into an electron neutrino again. Previously, scientists believed the existence of three aspects of the neutrino. In the Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment, dubbed MiniBooNE, researchers detected more oscillations are only possible if there are more than three aspects.

"These results imply that there are new particles or forces we have not yet imagined," said Byron Roe, who is a distinguished retired professor at the Physics Section, and author of a paper on the results newly published in Physical Review Letters.

"The simplest explanation involves adding new particles such as neutrinos, or sterile neutrinos that do not have the normal weak interactions."

All three types of neutrino interact with matter primarily through the weak nuclear force which makes them difficult to detect. Hypothesized that this fourth aspect would not interact through the weak force which makes it even more difficult to find.

The existence of sterile neutrinos could help explain the composition of the universe, said William Louis, who is a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory which was once a doctoral student at UM and is involved in the MiniBooNE experiment.

"Physicists and astronomers were looking for sterile neutrinos because they could explain in part or even the whole dark matter of the universe," said Louis. "Sterile neutrinos could also possibly help explain the matter asymmetry of the universe, or why the universe is basically composed of matter rather than antimatter."

MiniBooNE experiment is a collaboration among some 60 researchers from various institutions, held at Fermilab to check the results of the experiment Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) at Los Alamos National Laboratory which started in 1990. The LSND was the first to detect more neutrino oscillations than predicted by the standard model.

The preliminary results MiniBooNE a few years ago based on data from a neutrino beam (as opposed to an antineutrino beam), did not support the LSND results. Nonetheless, LSND experiments conducted using an antineutrino beam, so it was the next step for MiniBooNE.

The new results are based on the first three years of data from an antineutrino beam, and tells a different story than the previous results. MiniBooNE antineutrino beam data does support the LSND invention, and the fact that the MiniBooNE experiments produced different results for antineutrinos instead of neutrinos, in particular surprising physicists.

"The fact that we see this effect in antineutrinos and not in neutrinos makes it even more strange," Roe said. "This result means necessary even more serious addition to the standard model we than had been thought from the first LSND result."

These results seem to violate "the content parity symmetry" of the universe which states that the laws of physics apply in the same way for particles and antiparticles their equalizer. Violations of this symmetry have been seen in some decomposition rare, but not with neutrinos, Roe said.

While these results are statistically significant and do support the LSND discovery, the researchers physicists reminded that they need results in a longer period or additional experiments before they are allowed to disqualify the standard model predictions.