There was an experience, and there are anomalies. Is it a new elementary particle?

The new experiments confirm what was previously established: scientists are about to confirm the existence of a new elementary particle known as a sterile neutrino.

Behind the research are representatives of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who conducted the best experiment (the Paksan Experiment on Aseptic Transformations). Their findings in this regard were presented in the pages of two journals: Physical Review Letters And the physical review c..

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More than 1.5 kilometers below the surface, the scientists used 26 radioactive targets of chromium-51, a radioactive isotope of synthetic chromium. They also used an electron neutrino source to radiate the inner and outer tanks of gallium – a soft metal that had already been used in previous experiments. The interaction of electron neutrinos from chromium-51 and gallium gave rise to an isotope known as germanium-71. Its yield was 20-24% lower than expected based on theoretical models, while the same discrepancy was found to be consistent with previously observed models.

The results are very exciting. They strongly confirmed the anomalies we observed in previous experiments. But what this means is not clear. Currently, there are conflicting results regarding sterile neutrinos. If the results show that basic nuclear or atomic physics has been misunderstood, that would also be interesting.Steve Elliott of Los Alamos National Laboratory explains

Interestingly, the US-Soviet SAGE experiment was underway in the 1980s, which also used high-density gallium and neutrino sources. Then scientists noticed the deficit of electron neutrinos. The observed discrepancy between expected and actual results was called a party anomaly. They looked for evidence of oscillations between sterile electron and neutrino states.

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Decades later, in another experiment, a similar anomaly was observed. Among the possible explanations for this phenomenon, scientists mention oscillations towards sterile neutrinos. This hypothetical particle could be an important piece in the dark matter puzzle. This, although not yet observed, probably accounts for most of the mass in the universe. Other explanations for this anomaly include the possibility of misunderstandings in the experiment’s theoretical input data. The cross-section of the electron neutrino was not measured with the energies that occurred during the experiment. In the future, scientists want to use other sources of radiation with higher energy or longer half-lives, for example.