Discover
/
Article

Anomalous Cosmic‐Ray Data Suggest Oscillation Between Neutrino Flavors

OCT 01, 1994

DOI: 10.1063/1.2808665

When high‐energy cosmic ray protons and nuclei hit the top of the atmosphere, they generate showers of mesons that quickly decay to muons, electrons, positrons and neutrinos. A few kilometers below the surface of the Earth, nothing remains but the most energetic muons and almost all of the neutrinos. Irrespective of the complicated details, unimpeachable particle theory dictates that these hadronic showers produce, on average, twice as many muon‐flavored neutrinos (νμ and ν̄μ) as electron‐flavored neutrinos (νe and ν̄e). The details leave wiggle room for only a few percent departure from this predicted 2:1 ratio.

This Content Appeared In
pt-cover_1994_10.jpeg

Volume 47, Number 10

Related content
/
Article
/
Article
/
Article
/
Article

Get PT in your inbox

Physics Today - The Week in Physics

The Week in Physics" is likely a reference to the regular updates or summaries of new physics research, such as those found in publications like Physics Today from AIP Publishing or on news aggregators like Phys.org.

Physics Today - Table of Contents
Physics Today - Whitepapers & Webinars
By signing up you agree to allow AIP to send you email newsletters. You further agree to our privacy policy and terms of service.