A Modern Rutherford Experiment: Scientists Use Known Energy Neutrinos to Study Nucleus
- All News
-
- Search News
- Archived News
- Physicist Steven Cundiff Elected as Fellow of AAAS
- Observing the Dance of Ten Million Quantum Dots
- Physics Professor Tim McKay Explains ECoach Tool Now Used for All First-Year U-M Students
- Physicist Mark Newman's Scientific Cartogram Maps Featured in Washington Post
- U-M Physics Professor Tim McKay Developed Coaching Software to Help Students
- 11 Surprising Predictions for 2017 From Some of The Biggest Names In Science
- New Metamaterial Can Switch from Hard to Soft—And Back Again
- Physicist Lu Li and Team First to Uncover Rotational Symmetry Breaking in Magnetic Property of Unconventional Superconductor
- Physicist Michal Zochowski Collaborates with LSA Professor Sara Aton for ‘The Science of Sleep’
- Next-Gen Dark Matter Detector in a Race to Finish Line
- Physicist Roberto Merlin Selected as 2017 OSA Lippincott Award Recipient
- Michigan at the March for Science
- Norman M. Leff Assistant Professor Joshua Spitz Quoted in Scientific American Article
- All Events
- Special Lectures
- K-12 Programs
- Saturday Morning Physics
- Seminars & Colloquia
For the first time, scientists including Joshua Spitz, the U-M Norman M. Leff Assistant Professor of Physics and U-M Physics graduate students, Rory Fitzpatrick and Johnathon Jordan, have probed the nucleus using a previously unobserved source of known-energy neutrinos. Rutherford originally discovered the atomic nucleus by shooting alpha particles at gold foil. Ever since, electron scattering has been scientists’ primary tool for understanding internal nuclear processes. The prescription is simple: Take a beam of known-energy electrons, shoot them at a nucleus, and see what happens. The energy transferred to the nucleus—that is, the initial electron energy minus the outgoing electron energy—provides a window into the structure of the nucleus, the behavior of the nucleons inside, and the underlying interaction itself.
Scientists working on the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab have just reported measurements of the energy transferred to a carbon nucleus using known-energy neutrinos. These results, which are complementary to previous and continuing work on electron scattering, demonstrate a unique channel for studying the nucleus through the weak interaction only. This work also represents a crucial step toward elucidating the neutrino-nucleus interaction and improving neutrino oscillation experiments.
The paper is published in Physics Review Letters as an "Editor's Suggestion".
See additional articles in United Press International (UPI) and Physics.
More Information:
