Sterile Neutrinos

 


Sterile neutrinos (or inert neutrinos) are hypothetical particles (neutral leptons – neutrinos ) that interact only via gravity and do not interact via any of the  fundamental interactions of the Standard Model. The term sterile neutrino is used to distinguish them from the known active neutrinos in the  Standard Model , which carry an isospin charge of ±

+1/2 under the weak interaction.  


 This term usually refers to neutrinos with right-handed chirality (see right-handed neutrino), which may be added to the Standard Model. Occasionally it is used in a general sense for any neutral fermion, instead of the more cautiously vague name neutral heavy leptons (NHLs) or heavy neutral leptons (HNLs).

The existence of right-handed neutrinos is theoretically well-motivated, since all other known fermions have been observed with both left and right chirality, and since they could explain in a natural way the small active neutrino masses inferred from neutrino oscillation. The mass of the right-handed neutrinos themselves is unknown and could have any value between 1015 GeV and less than 1 eV.

The number of sterile neutrino types (if they exist) is not yet constrained by theory. This is in contrast to the number of active neutrino types, which has to equal that of charged leptons and quark generations to ensure the electroweak interaction is free of anomalies.

The search for sterile neutrinos is an active area of particle physics . If they exist and their mass is smaller than the energies of particles in the experiment, they can be produced in the laboratory, either by mixing between active and sterile neutrinos or in high energy particle collisions. If they are heavier, the only directly observable consequence of their existence would be the observed active neutrino masses. They may, however, be responsible for a number of unexplained phenomena in  physical cosmolog and astrophysics , including dark matter, baryogenesis hypothetical dark radiation.In May 2018, physicists of the MiniBooNE experiment reported a stronger neutrino oscillation signal than expected, a possible hint of sterile neutrinos.

Credit:wikipedia.org, physics.aps.org

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