Research Projects

The origin of neutrino mass certainly lies beyond the Standard Model of particle physics and hence must involve new interactions of neutrinos. It is expected that these interactions would lead to specific signatures in the neutrino oscillation probabilities observed at the current and future neutrino experiments. The project will test new theoretical ideas against the experimental data. It will study the feasibilities of proposed detectors for distinguishing among candidate scenarios of new physics. Even in the standard three-neutrino mixing picture, neutrino oscillations can be used to gain new insights. Neutrino observations at experiments will be exploited for fundamental tests of quantum mechanical phenomena such as interference and entanglement. Atmospheric neutrino data will be used to perform “oscillation tomography” of the Earth to learn about its internal features by using only weak interactions. This will be complementary to the data from seismology. Ultrahigh densities of neutrinos inside a core collapse supernova core give rise to significant neutrino-neutrino interactions, and consequently to nonlinear effects on neutrino oscillations therein, which may in turn affect the explosion mechanism. The understanding of these “collective” effects and the nature of their long-time behaviour has remained elusive to date. The project will try to solve this difficult problem by making inroads through analytic insights as well as numerical computing power. Extremely weakly interacting particles such as axions or ultralight scalars may leave their imprints in astrophysical observations. The project will Look for such signatures in the astrophysical data, or constrain the existence and interactions of such new particles using the lack of such signatures. This will be useful for probing the hidden parts of our Universe. Given the interest of Indian scientists in neutrinos, and the consequent need for training young scientists in this area, writing a modern textbook on this subject that takes into account the typical scientific knowledge and exposure of Indian students at the undergraduate and PhD level is the need of the hour. The project aims to come up with such a textbook in a digital form, using modern techniques of interactive content which may even be updated at a later stage. This would go a long way in creating a strong base of scientific human resource in neutrino physics and allied fields, in India as well as outside.