In particle physics, a massless particle is an elementary particle whose invariant mass is zero, the discovery of this phenomenon, known as neutrino oscillation, led to which Japanese physicist, known for neutrino experiments at the Kamiokande and its successor, Super-Kamiokande, shared the 2015 Nobel prize in physics?
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Massless particle In particle physics, a massless particle is an elementary particle whose invariant mass is zero. The two known massless particles are both gauge bosons: the photon (carrier of electromagnetism) and the gluon (carrier of the strong force). However, gluons are never observed as free particles, since they are confined within hadrons. Neutrinos were originally thought to be massless. However, because neutrinos change flavor as they travel, at least two of the types of neutrinos must have mass. The discovery of this phenomenon, known as neutrino oscillation, led to Canadian scientist Arthur B. McDonald and Japanese scientist Takaaki Kajita sharing the 2015 Nobel prize in physics.
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Takaaki Kajita Takaaki Kajita (梶田 隆章 , Kajita Takaaki ) is a Japanese physicist, known for neutrino experiments at the Kamiokande and its successor, Super-Kamiokande. In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Canadian physicist Arthur B. McDonald.
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Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector The Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND) is an electron antineutrino detector at the Kamioka Observatory, an underground neutrino detection facility near Toyama, Japan. The device is situated in a drift mine shaft in the old KamiokaNDE cavity in the Japanese Alps. The site is surrounded by 53 Japanese commercial nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors produce electron antineutrinos (formula_1) during the decay of radioactive fission products in the nuclear fuel. Like the intensity of light from a light bulb or a distant star, the isotropically-emitted formula_1 flux decreases at 1/R per increasing distance R from the reactor. The device is sensitive up to an estimated 25% of antineutrinos from nuclear reactors that exceed the threshold energy of 1.8 megaelectronvolts (MeV) and thus produces a signal in the detector.
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Dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical type of matter distinct from baryonic matter (ordinary matter such as protons and neutrons), neutrinos and dark energy. Dark matter has never been directly observed; however, its existence would explain a number of otherwise puzzling astronomical observations. The name refers to the fact that it does not emit or interact with electromagnetic radiation, such as light, and is thus invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Although dark matter has not been directly observed, its existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects such as the motions of visible matter, gravitational lensing, its influence on the universe's large-scale structure, on galaxies, and its effects on the cosmic microwave background.
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Electromagnetic mass Electromagnetic mass was initially a concept of classical mechanics, denoting as to how much the electromagnetic field, or the self-energy, is contributing to the mass of charged particles. It was first derived by J. J. Thomson in 1881 and was for some time also considered as a dynamical explanation of inertial mass "per se". Today, the relation of mass, momentum, velocity and all forms of energy, including electromagnetic energy, is analyzed on the basis of Albert Einstein's special relativity and mass–energy equivalence. As to the cause of mass of elementary particles, the Higgs mechanism in the framework of the relativistic Standard Model is currently used. In addition, some problems concerning the electromagnetic mass and self-energy of charged particles are still studied.
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Bunji Sakita Bunji Sakita (崎田 文二 , Sakita Bunji , 1930 – August 31, 2002) was a Japanese-American theoretical physicist who made important contributions in quantum field theory, superstring theory and discovered supersymmetry in 1971. He was a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the City College of New York.
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Double Chooz Double Chooz is a short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment in Chooz, France. Its goal is to measure or set a limit on the "θ" mixing angle, a neutrino oscillation parameter responsible for changing electron neutrinos into other neutrinos. The experiment uses reactors of the Chooz Nuclear Power Plant as a neutrino source and measures the flux of neutrinos they receive. To accomplish this, Double Chooz has a set of two detectors situated 400 meters and 1050 meters from the reactors. Double Chooz is a successor to the CHOOZ experiment; one of its detectors occupies the same site as its predecessor. Until January 2015 all data has been collected using only the far detector. The near detector was completed in September 2014, after construction delays and is taking physics data since beginning of 2015.
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Superconductivity Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic flux fields occurring in certain materials, called superconductors, when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature. It was discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911, in Leiden. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. It is characterized by the Meissner effect, the complete ejection of magnetic field lines from the interior of the superconductor as it transitions into the superconducting state. The occurrence of the Meissner effect indicates that superconductivity cannot be understood simply as the idealization of "perfect conductivity" in classical physics.
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Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (] ; October 24, 1932 – May 18, 2007) was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991.
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Shin'ichirō Tomonaga Shin'ichirō Tomonaga (朝永 振一郎 , Tomonaga Shin'ichirō , March 31, 1906 – July 8, 1979) , usually cited as Sin-Itiro Tomonaga in English, was a Japanese physicist, influential in the development of quantum electrodynamics, work for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 along with Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger.
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Superpartner In particle physics, a superpartner (also sparticle) is a hypothetical elementary particle. Supersymmetry is one of the synergistic theories in current high-energy physics that predicts the existence of these "shadow" particles.
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Plasma acceleration Plasma acceleration is a technique for accelerating charged particles, such as electrons, positrons, and ions, using the electric field associated with electron plasma wave or other high-gradient plasma structures (like shock and sheath fields). The plasma acceleration structures are created either using ultra-short laser pulses or energetic particle beams that are matched to the plasma parameters. These techniques offer a way to build high performance particle accelerators of much smaller size than conventional devices. The basic concepts of plasma acceleration and its possibilities were originally conceived by Toshiki Tajima and Prof. John M. Dawson of UCLA in 1979. Initial designs of experiment for "wakefield" were conceived at UCLA by the group of Prof. Chan Joshi. Current experimental devices show accelerating gradients several orders of magnitude better than current particle accelerators.
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Hermetic detector In particle physics, a hermetic detector (also called a 4π detector) is a particle detector designed to observe all possible decay products of an interaction between subatomic particles in a collider by covering as large an area around the interaction point as possible and incorporating multiple types of sub-detectors. They are typically roughly cylindrical, with different types of detectors wrapped around each other in concentric layers; each detector type specializes in particular particles so that almost any particle will be detected and identified. Such detectors are called "hermetic" because they are constructed so as the motion of particles are ceased at the boundaries of the chamber without any moving beyond due to the seals; the name "4π detector" comes from the fact that such detectors are designed to cover nearly all of the 4π steradians of solid angle around the interaction point; in terms of the standard coordinate system used in collider physics, this is equivalent to coverage of the entire range of azimuthal angle (formula_1) and pseudorapidity (formula_2). In practice, particles with pseudorapidity above a certain threshold cannot be measured since they are too nearly parallel to the beamline and can thus pass through the detector. This limit on the pseudorapidity ranges which can be observed forms part of the "acceptance" of the detector (i.e. the range of phase space which it is able to observe); broadly speaking, the main design objective of a hermetic detector is to maximise acceptance, i.e. to ensure that the detector is able to measure as large a phase space region as possible.
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C. F. Powell Cecil Frank Powell, FRS (5 December 1903 – 9 August 1969) was an English physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and for the resulting discovery of the pion (pi-meson), a subatomic particle.
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Peter Higgs Peter Ware Higgs (born 29 May 1929) is a British theoretical physicist, emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh, and Nobel Prize laureate for his work on the mass of subatomic particles.
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Sumio Iijima Sumio Iijima (飯島 澄男 "Iijima Sumio", born May 2, 1939) is a Japanese physicist, often cited as the inventor of carbon nanotubes. Although carbon nanotubes had been observed prior to his "invention", Iijima's 1991 paper generated unprecedented interest in the carbon nanostructures and has since fueled intense research in the area of nanotechnology. For this and other work Sumio Iijima was awarded, together with Louis Brus, the inaugural Kavli Prize for nanoscience in 2008.
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List of Nobel laureates in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics (Swedish: "Nobelpriset i fysik" ) is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel (who died in 1896), awarded for outstanding contributions in physics. As dictated by Nobel's will, the award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by a committee that consists of five members elected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award prize that has varied throughout the years.
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Pavel Cherenkov Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov (Russian: Па́вел Алексе́евич Черенко́в ] , July 28, 1904 – January 6, 1990) was a Soviet physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1958 with Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm for the discovery of Cherenkov radiation, made in 1934.
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NA61 experiment NA61/SHINE (standing for "SPS Heavy Ion and Neutrino Experiment") is a particle physics experiment at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The experiment studies the hadronic final states produced in interactions of various beam particles (pions, protons and beryllium, argon, and xenon nuclei) with a variety of fixed nuclear targets at the SPS energies.
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Tommy Ohlsson Dick "Tommy" Ohlsson (born 13 June 1973 in Osterhaninge, Sweden) is a Swedish physicist. He is a full professor in theoretical physics with specialization in elementary particle physics at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, situated at the AlbaNova University Center. His research field is theoretical particle physics, particularly neutrino physics and physics beyond the so-called Standard Model. He is an author of around hundred scientific publications and one textbook (see Publications). He has also written a popular science text about the theory of special relativity at Nobelprize.org.
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Muon The muon ( ; from the Greek letter mu (μ) used to represent it) is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with an electric charge of −1 "e" and a spin of, but with a much greater mass. It is classified as a lepton. As is the case with other leptons, the muon is not believed to have any sub-structure — that is, it is not thought to be composed of any simpler particles.
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Planck particle A Planck particle, named after physicist Max Planck, is a hypothetical particle defined as a tiny black hole whose Compton wavelength is equal to its Schwarzschild radius. Its mass is thus approximately the Planck mass, and its Compton wavelength and Schwarzschild radius are about the Planck length. Planck particles are sometimes used as an exercise to define the Planck mass and Planck length. They play a role in some models of the evolution of the universe during the Planck epoch.