The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment reported on March 8th the first results of its search for the last, most elusive piece of a long-standing puzzle: how is it that neutrinos can appear to vanish as they travel? The surprising answer opens a gateway to a new understanding of fundamental physics and may eventually solve the riddle of why there is far more ordinary matter than antimatter in the universe today. 

From Dec. 24, 2011, until Feb. 17, 2012, scientists in the Daya Bay collaboration observed tens of thousands of interactions of electron antineutrinos, caught by six massive detectors buried in the mountains adjacent to the powerful nuclear reactors of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group. These reactors, at Daya Bay and nearby Ling Ao, produce millions of quadrillions of elusive electron antineutrinos every second. 

The copious data revealed for the first time the strong signal of the effect that the scientists were searching for, a so-called “mixing angle” named theta one-three (written θ13), which the researchers measured with unmatched precision. Theta one-three, the last mixing angle to be precisely measured, expresses how electron neutrinos and their antineutrino counterparts mix and change into the other flavors. The Daya Bay collaboration’s first results indicate that theta one-three, expressed as sin2 2 θ13, is equal to 0.092 plus or minus 0.017. 

This is a new type of neutrino oscillation, and it is surprisingly large. Precise measurement will complete the understanding of the neutrino oscillation and pave the way for the future understanding of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. 

The Daya Bay experiment counts the number of electron antineutrinos detected in the halls nearest the Daya Bay and Ling Ao reactors and calculates how many would reach the detectors in the Far Hall if there were no oscillation. The number that apparently vanish on the way (oscillating into other flavors, in fact) gives the value of theta one-three. Because of the near-hall/far-hall arrangement, it’s not even necessary to have a precise estimate of the antineutrino flux from the reactors. 

Refined results will open the door to further investigations and influence the design of future neutrino experiments – including how to determine which neutrino flavors are the most massive, whether there is a difference between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations, and, eventually, why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe – because these were presumably created in equal amounts in the big bang and should have completely annihilated one another, the real question is why there is any matter in the universe at all.

Related results were published on Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research and Physical Review Letters.

Related Article:

Announcing the First Results from Daya Bay: Discovery of a New Kind of Neutrino Transformation