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Concepcion Gonzalez-Garcia
C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University,
and ICREA, Universitat de Barcelona
Massive neutrinos? how we know and why we care
Neutrinos hold a special place in particle physics. They were the first
particles to be postulated, before they were actually detected, on the
basis of a conservation law of Physics. In the Standard Model -- the seemingly
theory of everything that happens to elementary particles -- they
were entrusted with the conservation of each of the lepton flavours
and of the total number of leptons in the Universe. They did so by keeping
themselves massless.
A beautiful construction which has been shaken by the observation of
the quantum mechanical effect of lepton flavour oscillations
which by now we have no doubt are due to neutrino being
massive if very light, implying the need of revisiting the Standard Model.
In this talk I will walk through the arguments behind the statements above.
I will describe the evidence of neutrino masses from the observation
of oscillations in different settings, and our most basic understanding of
these results. I will speculate about the possible meaning of it all.
Concepcion Gonzalez-Garcia is a Spanish theoretical physicist
and a professor at the ICREA Dep. de Fisica Quantica i Astrofisica,
Universitat de Barcelona and the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical
Physics at Stony Brook University.
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