Neutrino Oscillations and the RENO Experiment

Karla Rosita Tellez Giron Flores, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

Neutrinos are the second most common particles in the universe, after the photons. Neutrinos (and antineutrinos) exist in three different "flavors", namely, electron, tau and muon neutrinos. A physical neutrino, however, can oscillate among these three flavors and, thus, it is said to be a mix of the three flavor states. In quantum mechanics representation, it is said that the three flavor states are the mixture of the three mass states. This mixture of neutrinos can generally be parameterized by the three so-called mixing angles (&thetas;12, &thetas;23, &thetas;13), three squared mass differences Δmij 2, i, j = 1, 2, 3 and a CP phase ΔCP. A non-zero value for &thetas;13 has set a scenario in which it will be possible to eventually measure the CP phase, which would provide information about the existing matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. RENO (Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation) is a South-Korean experiment which studies electron antineutrinos from nuclear power plants to directly determine the value of &thetas;13. In this thesis a simulation of the experiment was performed to obtain the oscillation parameters &thetas; 13 and Δ m213 .

Subject Area

Particle physics

Recommended Citation

Tellez Giron Flores, Karla Rosita, "Neutrino Oscillations and the RENO Experiment" (2017). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI10635682.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI10635682

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