ELUSIVE NEUTRINO CANDIDATES DETECTED IN BREAKTHROUGH PHYSICS EXPERIMENT

For the first time ever, researchers have detected neutrino candidates produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN facility near Geneva, Switzerland.

- Chelsea Gohd

In a major milestone in particle physics, researchers report observing six neutrino interactions during an experiment at the LHC. Neutrinos are subatomic particles that have a very small mass, like an electron, but have no electrical charge – a characteristic that has made them extremely challenging to detect.

These neutrinos were created during the inaugural run of an emulsion detector that was combined with CERN’s Forward Search Experiment (FASER) collaboration in 2018. “Prior to this project, no sign of neutrinos has ever been seen at a particle collider,” said Jonathan Feng, a physics and astronomy professor at the University of California, Irvine, and coleader of the FASER collaboration.. “This significant breakthrough is a step towards developing a deeper understanding of these elusive particles and the role they play in the universe.”