Participants in the FASER project (Forward Search Experience) Show details of their achievements in Physical Review Letters. Searching for neutrinos is not easy. These elementary particles arrive on Earth in huge quantities, but they are difficult to detect. The success in this case is double, because the research team members not only made the detection, but also used an experiment conducted at CERN for this purpose.
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As they explained, neutrinos can be divided into three classes: electron, muon, and tau. Previous studies had not measured the cross sections of energetic neutrino interactions at energies above 300 GeV for electron neutrinos and between 400 GeV and 6,000 GeV for muon neutrinos. The final chapter in this story was written using high-energy neutrinos produced by proton-proton collisions.
In total, the researchers identified 12 candidates. Four of them involved electron-neutrino interactions, and eight involved muon neutrinos. In each case, the energy exceeded 200 GeV. The interested parties themselves emphasize that there is an extremely small chance that the measurements were due to background fluctuations.
Scientists used the Large Hadron Collider to detect high-energy neutrinos produced by proton-proton collisions.
Their achievement is unique because we are talking about neutrinos coming from an artificial source. In this respect, they are the most energetic ever detected. Moreover, they are in the range of teraelectronvolts, or TeV. In the case of electron neutrinos, the energy range is 560-1740 GeV, and in the case of muon neutrinos – 520-1760 GeV.
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By comparison, previous experiments have never been able to exceed 300 GeV for electron neutrinos or operate in the range of 400 GeV to 6 TeV for muon neutrinos. Thanks to the activities carried out in such unusual conditions, physicists will have the opportunity to answer many pressing questions. These will include, for example, the question of whether particles have mass and the preponderance of matter over antimatter in the universe.
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