Neutrino Oscillations: A Practical Guide to Basics and Applications

Neutrino oscillation (N.O.) is the only firm evidence of the physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics and is one of the hottest topics in elementary particle physics today. This book focuses on the N.O., from its history to the future prospects, from the basic theories to the experiments.

Various phenomena of N.O. are described intuitively with thorough explanations of the fundamental physics behind well-known formulations. For example, while many textbooks start with a discussion of the mixing matrix, this book stresses that N.O. is caused by the transition amplitudes between different neutrino flavors, and that the purpose of N.O. experiments is to measure transition amplitudes and think of its origin. The current understanding of neutrino oscillation is also summarized using the most up-to-date measurements, including the recently measured neutrino mixing angle θ₁₃, and the future prospects of N.O. studies are described as well.

The level of this book makes it a bridge between introductory textbooks and scientific papers.

The author, Dr. Fumihiko Suekane, is an associate professor of Research Center for Neutrino Science, Tohoku University, Japan. He is an elementary particle physicist. He contributed for the discovery of the reactor neutrino oscillation as a core member of the KamLAND experiment. He was awarded Koshiba prize and Breakthrough prize for the achievement. He is now measuring the last neutrino mixing angle θ13 as a member of the Double Chooz experiment. He is also interested in teaching intuitive particle physics to students and has given a number of lectures for universities and topical schools. This book is one of the outcomes of those activities.

He was selected as Blaise Pascal Chairs, France in 2016 for promotion of neutrino science.