research

NuLat is currently under construction and being tested at UH Manoa and Virginia Tech. It is a compact, segmented, fast-timing anti-neutrino detector that aims to detect neutrinos at short baselines.

What are neutrinos? Neutrinos are small (nearly massless) subatomic particles with no charge. More specifically, they are fermions that interact only via the weak nuclear force and gravity, making them very difficult to detect. Currently, there are three known neutrinos, the electron neutrino, muon neutrino, and tau neutrino, though there may be a fourth 'sterile neutrino' that does not interact with the nuclear force. Below, we see the neutrinos as included in the standard model of elementary particles:

Research on Neutrinos
There are several active branches of research related to neutrinos:

Detector design - physicists and engineers are looking for new and innovate ways to detect neutrinos. As they have no charge and are extremely light, most neutrinos pass through matter without interacting at all. However, very rarely, a neutrino can interact, creating other particle and eventually light which can be detected. This usually take large detectors like Super-K, shown below with physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson rowing inside, with a huge volume of target material for the neutrino to interact with. As a result, scientists are looking for ways to detect more neutrinos with less material.
Directional detection - as physicists develop more efficient and more compact neutrino detectors, they are also searching for better methods to determine the direction a neutrino came from. This might seem trivial. After all, when we take a photo of something we often know exactly which direction the light came from. We are also able to track the movement of electrons, muons, and other particles fairly well. Neutrinos, however, don't have electric charge, making them very difficult to track, and they usually don't interact with the front surface of our detector. Instead, they enter the inside and on very rare occasions they cause a reaction there, giving off a small amount of light that only offers hints at the original trajectory.
Neutrino masses - the exact masses of the three neutrinos still remain unknown. Because they're so light, they deposit only a small amount of energy when interacting with other particles, making it a huge challenge to get a precise measurement of their masses.
Neutrino oscillations - Neutrinos, it turns out, are shape-shifters. Though they are created with a particular lepton 'flavor' (electron, muon, or tau), they can later be observed to have a different flavor because the particle oscillates quantum mechanically as it moves through space. These oscillations were first postulated in 1957 and their eventual discovery was award the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. Deficits and anomalies in neutrino rates at reactors indicate that there may be a fourth, 'sterile' neutrino that the other three can oscillate into.
Cosmic background neutrinos - You may be familiar with the Cosmic Microwave Background, a background of micowave energy left behind after the big bang. Similarly, there should be a sea of low energy neutrinos left over from shortly after the universe's birth. These neutrinos, however, should have extremely low energies (with a temperature of 1.95 K, very close to absolute zero), making them even more difficult to detect than neutrinos from reactors, stars, and other sources.

Applications
Possible applications for compact neutrino detectors include nuclear non-proliferation studies, compact reactor monitoring, remote reactor monitoring, hunts for nuclear material and contaminants spread by hostile entities, sterile neutrino searches, and studies of nuclear decay chains.

Neutrinos offer a fresh window into such nuclear processes, whether they're occurring inside a reactor, a weapon, a star, or the center of the Earth. As uncharged particle, they easily pass through large amounts of matter and shielding, giving us an early hint at what's happening inside.

For example, a neutrino detector could be deployed outside of a well-shielded facility to observe reaction rates inside. This might be beneficial in the event of an emergency, or as a backup to existing systems. Studies of the neutrino energy spectrum from reactors are also beginning to shed light on the complex decay chains inside, which are not always well-documented or fully understood, partly due to the pandemonium effect.

There may also be other undiscovered possibilities. When the electron was discovered by J. J. Thomson in 1897, it would have been almost impossible for him to imagine the plethora of technologies and devices that utilize our understanding of the humble particle today. Likewise, though they may seem tiny and insignificant, neutrinos may have untold secret utilities that await discovery by the physicists of the future.

Research on Neutrinos and NuLat