Sterile neutrinos (or inert neutrinos) are hypothetical particles (neutral leptons – neutrinos) that are believed to interact only via gravity and not via any of the other fundamental interactions of the Standard Model. The term sterile neutrino is used to distinguish them from the known, ordinary active neutrinos in the Standard Model, which carry an isospin charge of ± 1/ 2 and engage in the weak interaction. The term typically refers to neutrinos with right-handed chirality (see right-handed neutrino), which may be inserted into the Standard Model. Particles that possess the quantum numbers of sterile neutrinos and masses great enough such that they do not interfere with the current theory of Big Bang nucleosynthesis are often called neutral heavy leptons (NHLs) or heavy neutral leptons (HNLs).
The existence of right-handed neutrinos is theoretically well-motivated, because the known active neutrinos are left-handed and all other known fermions have been observed with both left and right chirality. They could also explain in a natural way the small active neutrino masses inferred from neutrino oscillation. The mass of the right-handed neutrinos themselves is unknown and could have any value between e15GeV and less than 1 eV. To comply with theories of leptogenesis and dark matter, there must be at least 3 flavors of sterile neutrinos (if they exist). This is in contrast to the number of active neutrino types required to ensure the electroweak interaction is free of anomalies, which must be exactly 3: the number of charged leptons and quark generations.
The search for sterile neutrinos is an active area of particle physics. If they exist and their mass is smaller than the energies of particles in the experiment, they can be produced in the laboratory, either by mixing between active and sterile neutrinos or in high energy particle collisions. If they are heavier, the only directly observable consequence of their existence would be the observed active neutrino masses.
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Presentation of the electroweak and strong interaction theories that constitute the Standard Model of particle physics. The course also discusses the new theories proposed to solve the problems of the
This course is the basic introduction to modern cosmology. It introduces students to the main concepts and formalism of cosmology, the observational status of Hot Big Bang theory
and discusses major
Physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) refers to the theoretical developments needed to explain the deficiencies of the Standard Model, such as the inability to explain the fundamental parameters of the standard model, the strong CP problem, neutrino oscillations, matter–antimatter asymmetry, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Another problem lies within the mathematical framework of the Standard Model itself: the Standard Model is inconsistent with that of general relativity, and one or both theories break down under certain conditions, such as spacetime singularities like the Big Bang and black hole event horizons.
Sterile neutrinos (or inert neutrinos) are hypothetical particles (neutral leptons – neutrinos) that are believed to interact only via gravity and not via any of the other fundamental interactions of the Standard Model. The term sterile neutrino is used to distinguish them from the known, ordinary active neutrinos in the Standard Model, which carry an isospin charge of ± 1/ 2 and engage in the weak interaction. The term typically refers to neutrinos with right-handed chirality (see right-handed neutrino), which may be inserted into the Standard Model.
In the theory of grand unification of particle physics, and, in particular, in theories of neutrino masses and neutrino oscillation, the seesaw mechanism is a generic model used to understand the relative sizes of observed neutrino masses, of the order of eV, compared to those of quarks and charged leptons, which are millions of times heavier. The name of the seesaw mechanism was given by Tsutomu Yanagida in a Tokyo conference in 1981. There are several types of models, each extending the Standard Model.
The nu MSM an extension of the Standard Model by three relatively light singlet Majorana fermions N-1,N-2,N-3 allows for the generation of lepton asymmetry which is several orders of magnitude larger
Right-handed neutrinos offer an elegant solution to two well-established phenomena beyond the Standard Model (SM)-masses and oscillations of neutrinos, as well as the baryon asymmetry of the Universe.
We for the first time map the range of active-sterile neutrino mixing angles in which leptogenesis is possible in the type I seesaw model with three heavy neutrinos with Majorana masses between 50 MeV