Abstract :

On October the 6th the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Taakaki Kajita and Art McDonald had been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics. These physicists were honoured for their scientific leadership of two collaborations – Super-Kamiokande and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory – that had shown categorically that neutrinos can change from one type to another, and back again, as they propagate. The corollary of the observation of these oscillations is that neutrinos are massive. The talk will introduce the particle physics of neutrinos, along with a little history, before describing the groundbreaking measurements of the two experiments. The talk will conclude with a brief look at how the further study of neutrinos may elucidate some of the unresolved puzzles in particle physics.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Jim Libby is an experimental particle physicist working at IITM since 2009. Dr Libby received his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of Oxford. His PhD work was with the DELPHI experiment at the Large Electron-Positron Collider at CERN. Since completing his PhD in 1999 he has worked with accelerator experiments at CERN, Stanford, Cornell and KEK (Japan) that study the metamorphosis of quarks and antiquarks experiencing the weak interaction. He also participates in studies related to the Indian-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) to be built under the West Bodi Hills, Tamil Nadu.