Scope of the meeting
Aside from fundamental particle properties such as masses, mixing angles, CP-violating phases and the Dirac- or Majorana character, neutrinos play a crucial role in cosmological settings. Major experimental efforts are underway to determine the mass of the lightest neutrino. The campaigns ECHo/Heidelberg, Holmes/Milano and NuMECS/LosAlamos attempt to measure the electron-neutrino mass by electron capture in 163Holmium. KATRIN/Karlsruhe aims at lowering the upper limit on the electron-antineutrino mass, while Double-Beta-Decay experiments give information on the Dirac- or Majorana nature and the Majorana-neutrino mass. Short- and long- baseline neutrino-oscillation experiments aim at solving the hierarchy problem: is mass eigenstate 1 or mass eigenstate 3 the lowest? Neutrinos also allow searching for violation of fundamental symmetries: CP violation can be studied with accelerator-based long-baseline and with atmospheric neutrinos. Neutrinos freeze out at about 1 s after the big bang, much earlier than photons, and their present temperature is 1.95 Kelvin. Thus, detection and the structure of this neutrino background would provide information of the Universe at much earlier times than the microwave background. How can one observe the neutrino background? Other questions concern the origin of the high-energy neutrinos found by ICE Cube, and the role of massive neutrinos in galaxy and galaxy cluster formation. Data from a variety of short-baseline experiments, as well as astrophysical observations and cosmology, hint at the existence of additional neutrino mass states beyond the three active species in the standard model. The implications of these putative sterile neutrino states are profound, and would change the paradigm of the standard model of particle physics. Could medium-heavy sterile neutrinos be candidates for dark matter? Neutrinos also play an important role in supernova explosions and neutron-star merger events as well as in stellar burning and the formation of elements.
The Erice workshop on nuclear physics 2017 intends to present the current status of the field of neutrino physics including lectures by international experts of the various subareas as well as invited and contributed talks by the participants.
In detail, the following topics will be presented and discussed:
- Search for the neutrino cosmic background
- Neutrinos and the structure formation of the Universe
- Neutrinos and dark matter
- Sterile neutrinos
- Neutrinos in supernovae and merger events
- Neutrinos in stellar burning and the formation of the elements
- Determination of the electron-neutrino mass by electron capture (ECHo, NuMECS and HOLMES)
- Measurement of the electron-antineutrino mass in tritium decay (KATRIN/Karlsruhe)
- Is the neutrino a Majorana- or Dirac particle? Determination by the neutrinoless Double Beta Decay. The Majorana-neutrino mass
- The neutrino hierarchy problem and short base-line neutrino oscillations
- Neutrinos and the search for fundamental symmetry violation such as CP-violation
