Status and potentialities of the JUNO experiment

One of the main open issues of neutrino physics is the determination of the mass hierarchy, discriminating between the two possible ordering of the mass eigenvalues, known as Normal and Inverted Hierarchies. The solution of this puzzle would have a significant impact both on elementary particle physics and astrophysics. A possible way to investigate the problem is the study, with medium baseline reactor antineutrinos, of the mass dependent corrections to inverse $\beta$ decays. This is the idea pursued by JUNO, a multipurpose underground liquid scintillator experiment that will start data taking in very few years from now. The main characteristics and the status of the experiment are discussed here, together with its rich physics program. We focus in particular on the potentiality for mass hierarchy determination, the main goal of the experiment, on the oscillation parameters accurate measurements and on the supernova and solar neutrinos and geoneutrino studies.Comment: Invited talk given, on behalf of the JUNO Collaboration, by Vito Antonelli at the XVII International Workshop on Neutrino Telescopes (Venice, 13-17 March 2017

Neutrino oscillations and Lorentz Invariance Violation in a Finslerian Geometrical model

Neutrino oscillations are one of the first evidences of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). Since Lorentz Invariance is a fundamental symmetry of the SM, recently also neutrino physics has been explored to verify the eventual modification of this symmetry and its potential magnitude. In this work we study the consequences of the introduction of Lorentz Invariance Violation (LIV) in the high energy neutrinos propagation and evaluate the impact of this eventual violation on the oscillation predictions. An effective theory explaining these physical effects is introduced via Modified Dispersion Relations. This approach, originally introduced by Coleman and Glashow, corresponds in our model to a modification of the special relativity geometry. Moreover, the generalization of this perspective leads to the introduction of a maximum attainable velocity which is specific of the particle. This can be formalized in Finsler geometry, a more general theory of space-time. In the present paper the impact of this kind of LIV on neutrino phenomenology is studied, in particular by analyzing the corrections introduced in neutrino oscillation probabilities for different values of neutrino energies and baselines of experimental interest. The possibility of further improving the present constraints on CPT-even LIV coefficients by means of our analysis is also discussed.Comment: Accepted for publication with minor revisions, will appear on European Physics Journal

The Neutrino mass matrix after Kamland and SNO salt enhanced results

An updated analysis of all available neutrino oscillation evidence in Solar experiments including the latest SNO ES,CC and NC data (254d live time, NaCL enhanced efficiency) is presented. We obtain, for the fraction of active oscillating neutrinos: sin^2alpha=(\Phi_{NC}-\Phi_{CC})/(\Phi_{SSM}-\Phi_{CC})=0.94^{+0.0.065}_{-0.060} nearly 20\sigma from the pure sterile oscillation case. The fraction of oscillating sterile neutrinos cos^2\alpha \lsim 0.12 (1 sigma CL). At face value, these results might slightly favour the existence of a small sterile oscillating sector. In the framework of two active neutrino oscillations we determine individual neutrino mixing parameters and their errors we obtain Delta m^2= 7.01\pm 0.08 \times 10^{-5} eV^2, tan^2 theta=0.42^{+0.12}_{-0.07}. The main difference with previous analysis is a better resolution in parameter space. In particular the secondary region at larger mass differences (LMAII) is now excluded at 95% CL. The combined analysis of solar and Kamland data concludes that maximal mixing is not favoured at 4-5 sigma. This is not supported by the antineutrino reactor results alone. We estimate the individual elements of the two neutrino mass matrix, writing M^2=m^2 I+M_0^2, we obtain (1 sigma errors): M_0^2=10^{-5} eV^2\pmatrix{ 2.06^{+0.29}_{-0.31} & 3.15^{+0.29}_{-0.35} \cr 3.15^{+0.29}_{-0.35} & 4.60^{+0.56}_{-0.44} }

Hamevol1.0: a C++ code for differential equations based on Runge-Kutta algorithm. An application to matter enhanced neutrino oscillation

We present a C++ implementation of a fifth order semi-implicit Runge-Kutta algorithm for solving Ordinary Differential Equations. This algorithm can be used for studying many different problems and in particular it can be applied for computing the evolution of any system whose Hamiltonian is known. We consider in particular the problem of calculating the neutrino oscillation probabilities in presence of matter interactions. The time performance and the accuracy of this implementation is competitive with respect to the other analytical and numerical techniques used in literature. The algorithm design and the salient features of the code are presented and discussed and some explicit examples of code application are given.Comment: 18 pages, Late

Solar Neutrinos

The study of solar neutrinos has given since ever a fundamental contribution both to astroparticle and to elementary particle physics, offering an ideal test of solar models and offering at the same time relevant indications on the fundamental interactions among particles. After reviewing the striking results of the last two decades, which were determinant to solve the long standing solar neutrino puzzle and refine the Standard Solar Model, we focus our attention on the more recent results in this field and on the experiments presently running or planned for the near future. The main focus at the moment is to improve the knowledge of the mass and mixing pattern and especially to study in detail the lowest energy part of the spectrum, which represents most of solar neutrino spectrum but is still a partially unexplored realm. We discuss this research project and the way in which present and future experiments could contribute to make the theoretical framemork more complete and stable, understanding the origin of some "anomalies" that seem to emerge from the data and contributing to answer some present questions, like the exact mechanism of the vacuum to matter transition and the solution of the so called solar metallicity problem.Comment: 51 pages, to be published in Special Issue on Neutrino Physics, Advances in High Energy Physics Hindawi Publishing Corporation 201

A New Basis for QED Bound State Computations

A simple method to compute QED bound state properties is presented, in which binding energy effects are treated non-perturbatively. It is shown that to take the effects of all ladder Coulomb photon exchanges into account, one can simply perform the derivative of standard QED amplitudes with respect to the external momentum. For example, the derivative of the light-by-light scattering amplitude gives an amplitude for orthopositronium decay to three photons where any number of Coulomb photon exchanges between the e-e+ is included. Various applications are presented. From them, it is shown that binding energy must be treated non-perturbatively in order to preserve the analyticity of positronium decay amplitudes. Interesting perspectives for quarkonium physics are briefly sketched.Comment: LaTeX, 23 pages, 16 figures. Minor corrections. Some comments adde

Solar neutrino experiments and Borexino perspectives

We present an updated analysis of all the data available about solar neutrinos, including the charged current SNO results. The best fit of the data is obtained in the Large Mixing Angle region, but different solutions are still possible. We also study the perspectives of Borexino and conclude that this experiment, with a parallel analysis of total rate and day-night asymmmetry, should be able to discriminate between the different possible solutions.Comment: 3 pages, Latex, talk given by V. Antonelli at TAUP 2001 Conferenc