Neutrino Factory

Neutrinos are one of nature's most unusual particles. In order to study their odd properties we need to produce a large amount of them. The Neutrino factory is a project to design and build a machine capable of producing an intense, highly-focused beam of neutrinos.

Neutrinos can pass through the Earth and still be detected at the other side. A Neutrino factory should be able to produce a beam that can be detected in laboratories thousands of kilometres away.

Such a device is expected to be able to shed light on the mass of neutrinos and how readily they change into each other. See Weird Facts.

The easiest way to produce neutrinos is to use another particle, the muon. Muons are almost identical to electrons except 200 times heavier. Muons radioactively decay into electrons and in doing so produce two neutrinos: A muon-type neutrino and an electron-type (anti-)neutrino.

Muons are heavy and electrically charged. This means we can manipulate them easily. If we can get the muons to sit in a tightly controlled storage ring, then when they decay, the neutrinos will all come out in the same direction in a beam.

You can find more information at a general level on the International Design Study website or continue to our Research Pages.

Weird Facts About Neutrinos [1] [2] [3] [4]

  • #1 Mass

    Neutrinos were, until the 1990s, beleived to be massless. We know now that they have mass but we are still not entirely sure how much. Our best estimate says they are lighter than one-millionth the mass of the next lightest particle, the electron.

    The mass difference between the different types of neutrino is believed to be even smaller by about 50 times; See #2.

  • #2 Type

    Neutrinos come in three types: electron-type, muon-type and tau-type. Classified by how they interact with other particles.

    Neutrinos change their type as they move through space. This is called Neutrino Oscillation.

    This leads us to believe that neutrinos have mass, since the mass of a particle determines how it moves through space. As a result we could classify neutrinos in a different way, by mass, eg: small, medium and large.

    Quantum mechanics only allows us to use one classification at a time; mass types or interaction types. So when neutrinos move through space as mass types, we lose sight of what interaction type they are.

  • #3 Interactions

    Neutrinos are one of the least reactive particles that exist. They pass straight through the Earth without interacting.

    Needless to say, They have no trouble passing through you either. 50 Trillion fly straight through your body from the sun each second.

    Neutrinos have no charge, so they don't interact electromagnetically. They do however interact via the Weak Force.

    As the name suggests, the Weak Force is pretty weak compared to electromagnetism.

    This means we have to look very hard to see any traces of neutrino interactions. Since they don't happen very often.

  • #4 Handedness

    Like hockey sticks, screws and scissors, all elementary particles have a handedness. In fact handedness (or chirality) is defined for particles very similarly to screws; by which way they spin around the direction they are pointed in.

    For most types of particle there are equally many left-handed as right-handed particles.

    This isn't the case with neutrinos where all neutrinos are left-handed. A right-handed neutrino either fundamentally can not exist or is something so different we wouldn't even recognise it as a neutrino. It is as if when a neutrino looks at itself in the mirror, it sees a monster instead of its own reflection.