Related papers: Ettore Majorana and his heritage seventy years lat…
The Majorana nature of massive neutrinos will be crucially probed in the next-generation experiments of the neutrinoless double-beta ($0\nu 2\beta$) decay. The effective mass term of this process, $\langle m\rangle^{}_{ee}$, may be…
In this paper I discuss Enrico Fermi's view of identical particles, taking a lecture that he gave in 1933 as a starting point. Fermi used his lecture as a basis for a paper that was published in 1934: the paper is in italian and is not…
Recent results on neutrinoless double beta decay, as reported by Klapdor-Kleingrothaus et al., take us for the first time into the realm of Majorana spacetime structure. However, this structure has either been treated as an afterthought to…
Neutrinoless double beta decay has been the subject of intensive theoretical work as it represents the only practical approach to discovering whether neutrinos are Majorana particles or not, and whether lepton number is a conserved quantum…
In these lectures we first briefly review the main observational facts which imply that most part of matter in the Universe is not visible and some recent intriguing experimental data which would point to a significant contribution to Omega…
This article reviews the biography of the Swiss mathematician Marcel Grossmann (1878-1936) and his contributions to the emergence of the general theory of relativity. The first part is his biography, while the second part reviews his…
If a fermion is travelling through a medium, it can have matter-induced magnetic and electric dipole moments. These contributions conserve chirality, and can be non-vanishing even for a Majorana neutrino. Several implications for neutrino…
As in Greek mythology, the neutrino was born in the mind of Wolfgang Pauli to salvage a fundamental principle. Its existence met with universal skepticism by a scientific community used to infer particles from experiment. Its detection in…
Bruno Pontecorvo was a great physicist who had enormous impact on the development of neutrino physics. His contribution to neutrino physics is briefly reviewed.Some recollections about his personality are also given.
This article was written for a multi-volume History of Science, and published in Italian translation: Storia della Scienza, Volume IX, La Grande Scienza, pp 645-656 (published by Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Fondata da Giovanni…
From the data release of OPERA - CNGS experiment, and publicly announced on 23 September 2011, we cast a phenomenological model based on a Majorana neutrino state carrying a fictitious imaginary mass term, already discussed by Majorana in…
The effective Majorana neutrino mass is evaluated by using the latest results of neutrino oscillation experiments. The problems of the neutrino mass spectrum,absolute mass scale of neutrinos and the effect of CP phases are addressed. A…
The physical results of quantum field theory are independent of the various specializations of Dirac's gamma-matrices, that are employed in given problems. Accordingly, the physical meaning of Majorana's equation is very dubious,considering…
In spite of the general belief that neutrinos are Majorana particles, their character should be revealed experimentally. We begin by discussing why it is so difficult in terrestrial experiments. If neutrinos are Majorana particles, the…
In Cosmology and in Fundamental Physics there is a crucial question like: where the elusive substance that we call Dark Matter is hidden in the Universe and what is it made of?, that, even after 40 years from the Vera Rubin seminal…
The Ettore Majorana paper - Theory of incomplete P triplets- published in 1931, focuses on the role of selection rules for the non-radiative decay of two electron excitations in atomic spectra, involving the configuration interaction…
To fully understand the present position concerning so-called dark matter, it is necessary to examine the historical background since, only by following this approach, do all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Here an attempt is made…
In April 1925, Enrico Fermi was only 23 years old and he had graduated less than three years earlier. Despite his age, Fermi was invited at the University of Rome by Federigo Enriques to give several lectures on the recent advances in…
In 1923 Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) discovered the material waves and six years later received the Nobel price for this discovery. Apart these well known facts this French physicist nevertheless seems to be forgotten. Details of his life…
The modern picture of the neutrino as a multiple mass highly mixed neutral particle has emerged over 40 years of study. Best known of the issues leading to this picture was the apparent loss of neutrinos coming from the sun. This article…