OPERA: second neutrino tau interaction

The observation of a second neutrino tau interaction at the Gran Sasso Laboratory was announced by the OPERA Collaboration during the 25th Neutrino Conference, in Kyoto, earlier this month. This result follows on from the first observation, made in 2010.

With this new result the OPERA detector is back on track to its original motivations, after a noisy excursion over the measurement of the neutrino time of flight. The OPERA experiment was designed to search for the rare…

Asian experiments unlock neutrino oscillation mystery

Two reactor experiments, China’s Daya Bay and Korea’s RENO, have made the best measurement of the neutrino mixing angle, θ₁₃, an essential property for neutrino research. The discovery of a non-zero θ₁₃ at approximately 9˚ – which was published in March and Apri this year – completes our picture of neutrino mixing. This quite large value for the mixing angle will make it easier to conduct future long baseline neutrino experiments. This, in turn, may lead to a better understanding of the matter-antimatter asymmetry seen in the Universe…