This work is forthcoming in Physical Review D. ![]() We developed a “mixed model” that involves two types of exotic neutrinos - one which morphs to electron flavor and one which decays to a photon. Our group has worked with physicists from Harvard, Columbia, and Cambridge universities to explore new sources of photons that can appear in a theoretical model that also has a 20 percent electron signature. Q: What is our current understanding of the MiniBooNE excess?Ī: Our understanding has progressed significantly of late thanks to developments in both the experimental and theoretical realms. Our group at MIT is interested in new physics models that can potentially explain this full picture. However, it is difficult to explain these anomalies along with MiniBooNE through a single sterile neutrino - the full picture doesn’t quite fit. There are many additional anomalies seen in neutrino physics that indicate this particle might exist. Due to the effects of neutrino oscillations, this sterile neutrino would manifest itself as an enhancement of electron neutrinos in MiniBooNE. The most common explanation of the MiniBooNE excess involves the addition of such a sterile neutrino to the Standard Model. Q: Why is the MiniBooNE anomaly a big deal?Ī: One of the big open questions in neutrino physics concerns the possible existence of a hypothetical particle called the “sterile neutrino.” Finding a new particle would be a very big deal because it can give us clues to the larger theory that explains the many particles we see. In this interview, Kamp discusses the future of the MiniBooNE anomaly within the context of MicroBooNE’s latest findings. Physics graduate students Nicholas Kamp and Lauren Yates, along with Professor Janet Conrad, all within the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science, have played a leading role in MicroBooNE’s deep-learning-based search for an excess of neutrinos in the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam. ![]() MicroBooNE is an ideal test of the MiniBooNE excess thanks to its use of a novel detector technology known as the liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC), which yields high-resolution pictures of the particles that get created in neutrino interactions. In 2007, researchers developed the idea for a follow-up experiment, MicroBooNE, which recently finished collecting data at Fermilab. MiniBooNE observed significantly more neutrino interactions that produce electrons than one would expect given our best knowledge of the Standard Model - and physicists are trying to understand why. One of the long-standing puzzles in neutrino physics comes from the Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment (MiniBooNE), which ran from 2002 to 2017 at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Illinois. While they are among the most abundant known particles in the universe, they interact very rarely with matter, making their detection a challenging experimental feat. Neutrinos are one of the most mysterious members of the Standard Model, a framework for describing fundamental forces and particles in nature.
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