Thursday, August 18, 2016

Experiments to find right handed neutrinos



I have read this in the wiki article about neutrino oscillation.



The question of how neutrino masses arise has not been answered conclusively. In the Standard Model of particle physics, fermions only have mass because of interactions with the Higgs field (see Higgs boson). These interactions involve both left- and right-handed versions of the fermion (see chirality). However, only left-handed neutrinos have been observed so far.



An then I have found a link therein (on Wikipedia) which lead to this book:


https://books.google.com/books?id=tYFMoFi50hsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Seventy+Years+of+Double+Beta+Decay:+From+Nuclear+Physics+to+Beyond-standard&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGydPEhsLbAhWzMn0KHVuxCSoQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Seventy%20Years%20of%20Double%20Beta%20Decay%3A%20From%20Nuclear%20Physics%20to%20Beyond-standard&f=false


But so far I have found nothing searhing for right-handed neutrinos, or any experiments to look for them.


I have read these too:


Why are right hand neutrinos unaffected by all forces except gravity


If the mass of neutrino is not zero, why we cannot find right-handed neutrinos and left-handed anti-neutrinos?



Question:



  1. Are there any recent experiments that are aimed at finding right-handed neutrinos?



Answer



The simplest way to incorporate massive neutrinos into the SM is to make them Dirac particles much like quarks, but with itty-bitty couplings to the Higgs field. Let’s take this much on faith.


The SM predicts that right-handed neutrinos will interact with Higgs scalars but not with W, Z, or photons. Interactions with scalars flip helicities. I cannot think of any experimentally feasible process involving incoming neutrinos and virtual Higgs exchange (e.g., ${{\nu }_{R}}+p\to {{\nu }_{L}}+p$) that would have a telltale signature. Besides being very feeble due to the itty-bitty couplings, such processes would be mistaken for Z exchange, even though there would be a subtle difference in the angular distributions of products.


No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...