Bird's-eye view of
the underground Daya Bay Far Hall during installation. The four antineutrino
detectors are
immersed in a large pool filled with ultra pure water as a cosmic
muon veto system.
(Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab)
By tracking the transformation of neutrinos, scientists hope
to answer fundamental physics questions.
(September 11, 2015) In
the Daya Bay region of China, about 55 kilometers northeast of Hong Kong, a
research project is underway to study ghostlike, elusive particles called
neutrinos. Today, the international Daya Bay Collaboration announces new
findings on the measurements of neutrinos, paving the way forward for further
neutrino research, and confirming that the Daya Bay neutrino experiment
continues to be one to watch.
The latest findings involve measurements that track the way
neutrinos change types or flavors as they move, a characteristic called
neutrino oscillation. By measuring neutrino oscillation, the researchers can
home in on two key neutrino properties: their "mixing angle" and
"mass splitting."
Measurements of these properties by the Daya Bay
Collaboration are the most precise to date, an improvement of about a factor of
two over previous measurements published by the collaboration in early in 2014.
The new results will be published in Physical Review Letters.