Related papers: Are Neutrinos Their Own Antiparticles?
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…
Are neutrinos with definite masses Majorana or Dirac particles? This is one of the most fundamental problem of the modern neutrino physics. The solution of this problem could be crucial for understanding of the origin of small neutrino…
This is an elementary account of neutrinos as Majarona particles and the search for neutrinoless double beta decays. It also includes some more ideas about neutrinos.
Are neutrinos their own antiparticles? We explain why they very well might be. Then, after highlighting the fact that, to determine experimentally whether they are or not, one must overcome the smallness of neutrino masses, we discuss 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…
It was recently claimed that the observed physical neutrinos cannot be of Majorana type because such particles lack vector interactions. Contrary to this claim we show that if the Majorana neutrino is massless it is indistinguishable from…
It is firmly believed that a signal of neutrinoless double beta decay can unquestionably confirm the Majorana nature of neutrinos. However we notice that a Majorana neutrino mass induced after some neutrinoless double beta decay processes…
The most plausible see-saw explanation of the smallness of the neutrino masses is based on the assumption that total lepton number is violated at a large scale and neutrinos with definite masses are Majorana particles. In this review we…
The predictions for the effective Majorana mass |<m>| in neutrinoless double-beta decay in the case of 3-neutrino mixing and massive Majorana neutrinos are reviewed. The physics potential of the experiments, searching for neutrinoless…
We consider the scheme with mixing of three neutrinos and a mass hierarchy. We shown that, under the natural assumptions that massive neutrinos are Majorana particles and there are no unlikely fine-tuned cancellations among the…
A brief sketch is given of the present observational status and future prospects of the physics of neutrino mass, including a survey of the various theoretical schemes of neutrino mass generation. Emphasis is given to those which are…
Two of the most important and pressing questions in cosmology and particle physics are: (1) What is the nature of cold dark matter? and (2) Will near-future experiments on neutrinoless double beta decay be able to ascertain that the…
The theoretical and experimental issues relevant to neutrinoless double-beta decay are reviewed. The impact that a direct observation of this exotic process would have on elementary particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics and…
In the introductory part we briefly consider basics of neutrino oscillations and convenient phenomenology of neutrino oscillations in vacuum. Main part of this report is dedicated to a discussion of a plausible BSM scenarios of neutrino…
Finding out if neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana particles is known to be extremely difficult. This is generally believed to be due to the smallness of the neutrino mass compared to typical neutrino energies, and to the fact that in the limit…
These lectures describe some aspects of the physics of massive neutrinos. After a brief introduction of neutrinos in the Standard Model, I discuss possible patterns for their masses. In particular, I show how the presence of a large…
The history of research associated with the fundamental problem of the nature of massive neutrinos, which can be Dirac particles or Majorana fermions, and the related processes of neutrinoless double beta decay, $(A,Z)\rightarrow (A,Z+2) +…
There is a broad theoretical consensus on the idea that ordinary neutrinos have a Majorana mass, but we have no clear prediction about its value, and direct experimental measurements of this quantity are rather challenging. In this work, we…
The status of the search for neutrinoless double beta decay is reviewed. The effort to reach the sensitivity needed to cover the effective Majorana neutrino mass corresponding to the degenerate and inverted mass hierarchy is described.…
Neutrinoless double beta decay pops up almost in any extension of the standard model. It is perhaps the only process, which can unambiguously determine whether the massive neutrinos are Majorana or Dirac type particles. In addition from the…