Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Apr 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002aps..apr.o6003t&link_type=abstract
American Physical Society, April Meeting, Jointly Sponsored with the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American As
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Atmospheric neutrinos are decay products of pions and kaons (and of their decay products muons) produced by nuclear interactions of cosmic rays with air nuclei. Though their flux is not known well, only within 20 %, physics quantities that are independent of the flux uncertainty exist. The ratio of the number of muon neutrinos to the number of electron neutrinos is estimated to be accurate within 5 %. The other quantity is the shape of the zenith-angle distribution. Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande are water Cherenkov detectors with 3,000 ton and 50,000 ton pure water, respectively. Kamiokande was operational in 1983 - 1996, and Super-K in 1996 - 2001 and 2003 - in future. We had already noted in 1988 that the observed μ/e ratio, which represented ν_mu/ν_e, was smaller by about 40 %. Later in 1994 we noted that the zenith angle distribution of muon neutrinos was strongly distorted, namely much fewer muons observed in the upward direction, while downward-going muons were what we expected. Electrons were quite normal. In 1996 Super-Kamiokande was ready. Its fiducial volume is 22.5 kton, much larger than Kamiokande's 1.04 kton. In 1998 based on 25.5 kton years of data we presented convincing results on the small μ/e ratio which was caused by fewer number of muons in the upward direction. The essential feature of the observed anomaly was that the disappearance of muon neutrinos depended strongly on their path length and on their energies. Electrons showed no anomaly within the experimental limit. These results were quantitatively and almost uniquely explained by oscillation of muon neutrinos to tau neutrinos, thus evidence for the finite but tiny mass of neutrinos.
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