Related papers: Ettore Majorana and his heritage seventy years lat…
Majorana fermions are spin-1/2 neutral particles that are their own antiparticles and were initially predicted by Ettore Majorana in particle physics but their observation still remains elusive. The concept of Majorana fermions has been…
The neutrinoless double beta decay as well as any other laboratory experiment has not been able to answer the question of the neutrino's nature. Hints on the answer are available when neutrino oscillations and $(\beta\beta)_{0 \nu}$ are…
The subtitle of my talk is ``The quest for understanding the origin of neutrino masses''. After reviewing why the discovery of neutrino masses is also the discovery of New Physics, the substance of the talk details mechanisms for generating…
An account is given of an interesting but unknown theory by Majorana regarding scalar quantum electrodynamics, elaborated several years before the known Pauli-Weisskopf theory. Theoretical calculations and their interpretation are given in…
The Majorana paper ``Symmetrical theory of the electron and positron'' is briefly reviewed. The present status of Majorana neutrinos is discussed.
The neutrino is the most elusive particle that we know and for many years physicists doubted that neutrinos might never be revealed. Today we know and we reveal neutrinos produced by different astrophysical objects and by interactions of…
The activities carried out by Italian physicists in the field of semiconductor physics during the period spanning from 1945 to the foundation of the National Group of Structure of the Matter (GNSM, 1965) are reviewed within their historical…
A new Goldstone particle named Majoron is introduced in order to explain the origin of neutrino mass by some new physics models assuming that neutrinos are Majorana particle. By expanding signal region and using likelihood analysis, it…
We discuss recent developments in neutrino physics and focus, in particular, on neutrino oscillations and matter effects of three light active neutrinos. Moreover, we discuss the difference between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos, neutrinoless…
After nearly 80 years since the first guess on its existence, neutrino still escapes our insight: the mass and the true nature (Majorana or Dirac) of this particle is still unknown. In the past ten years, neutrino oscillation experiments…
The history of the Institute of Physics at the University of Florence is traced from the beginning of the 20th century, with the arrival of Antonio Garbasso as Director (1913), to the 1960s. Thanks to Garbasso's expertise, not only did the…
Neutrinoless double beta decay is a hypothetical radioactive process which, if observed, would prove the neutrino to be a Majorana fermion: a particle that is its own antiparticle. In this lecture mini-series I discuss the physics of…
The search for a Majorana Fermion has been an area of intense interest in condensed matter research of late. This elusive particle, predicted to exist in 1937, has been sought after for both fundamental and practical reasons. On the…
The life of Isaak Yakovlevich Pomeranchuk was short (20.05.1913 -- 14.12.1966). But the impact of his personality and his works on physics and physicists is remarkable. The talk describes the biography of I.Ya. Pomeranchuk, his major…
About 40 years ago, the neutrino was ruled out as the dark matter particle based on several arguments. Here I use the well-established concept of quantum uncertainties of position and momentum to describe the decoupling of neutrinos from…
Neutrinos are the only known elementary fermions that can exhibit Majorana nature. As per the "practical Dirac-Majorana confusion theorem" it is impossible to distinguish between Dirac and Majorana neutrinos via any kinematic tests when…
We dedicate this article to our father, Prof. Dr. Guenter Vojta, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. While colleagues appreciate him as an excellent scientist with widespread interests and an amazingly broad knowledge, we see in him the…
We give a detailed account of the recent retrieval of a consistent amount (about 600 pages) of documents written by Enrico Fermi and/or his collaborators, coming from different sources previously unexplored. These documents include…
Thanks to oscillation experiments it is now an established fact that neutrinos are massive particles. Yet, the assessment of neutrinos absolute mass scale is still an outstanding challenge in particle physics and cosmology as oscillation…
Even after the discovery of neutrino flavour oscillations, based on data from atmospheric, solar, reactor, and accelerator experiments, many characteristics of the neutrino remain unknown. Only the neutrino square-mass differences and the…