NOvA shines new light on how neutrinos behave

NOvA issues a press release and announces new result on the disappearance of muon neutrinos at the 38th International Conference on High Energy Physics.

It is known that the amount of the electron neutrino species in the third neutrino mass state, the one off all by itself in the figure below, is small. There has been much prejudice that the other two neutrino species, the muon and tau neutrinos, are equally represented in the third neutrino mass state. This is equivalent to stating that θ23 = 45 degrees, which since the amount of muon and tau neutrino is proportional to tan(θ23) means that their contributions to the third neutrino mass state are equal and maximal.

NOvA's new results seems to indicate that is not the case.

The UVA Antimatter Asymmetry group has been a member of NOvA since its inception. Among other things, we designed and built the power distribution system that powers all of the electronics.

Press release