Lectures and Talks

Neutrinos are perhaps the most enigmatic particles among the matter-field elementary particles. Because of its fundamental "lack of interactions" it took over a half century for its properties to be studied in detail since its existence was conceived by Pauli in 1930's. Also because of these intrinsic difficulties historically the experimental findings on neutrinos have been often surprising, often disagreeing with theoretical expectations and sometimes even controversial. Consequently, several Nobel prizes have been awarded to the neutrino experiments. In particular, most recently, the Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 was awarded to Takaaki Kajita and Art McDonald for the discovery of neutrino oscillations. Also the Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics 2016 was awarded to the neutrino oscillation experiments.

In this talk, I will discuss some breakthrough advances in neutrino physics through historical perspectives, especially in connection with the Nobel prizes. I will discuss what makes an experiment a Nobel prize worthy, who gets the prize and why some prizes are given so late. I will also share some personal anecdotes that I have gained during my over three decades of research in the neutrino field.

Our study on neutrinos has not been completed yet. For example, matter-antimatter asymmetry is one of the most outstanding mysteries of the universe that provides a necessary condition to our own existence. It is generally agreed that experimental observation of "Charge-Parity" Violation (CPV) in the lepton sector could provide us with a critical clue to this profound mystery.

Recent T2K data show an intriguing initial indication of CPV which is further corroborated by other experiments. Ultimately, however, in order to establish unequivocal results on leptonic CPV, we need a next generation experiment with a more powerful beam, and a larger and/or higher resolution detector. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) in US is such an experiment. Currently, the Stony Brook Neutiro and Nucleon decay Group is deeply involved in the T2K and DUNE experiments.