The muon neutrino is an
elementary particle which has the symbol () and zero
electric charge. Together with the
muon
A muon ( ; from the Greek letter mu (μ) used to represent it) is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with an electric charge of −1 '' e'' and a spin of , but with a much greater mass. It is classified as a lepton. As wi ...
it forms the second
generation of leptons, hence the name muon
neutrino. It was discovered in 1962 by
Leon Lederman,
Melvin Schwartz and
Jack Steinberger. The discovery was rewarded with the 1988
Nobel Prize in Physics.
Discovery
The muon neutrino or "neutretto" was hypothesized to exist by a number of physicists in the 1940s. The first paper on it may be
Shoichi Sakata and
Takesi Inoue
Takeshi ( in hiragana or in katakana) is a masculine Japanese given name.
Possible writings
*武, "warrior"
*毅, "strong"
*猛, "fierce"
*健, "healthy"
*剛, "sturdy"
*彪, "spotted"
*威, "intimidate"
*壮, "robust"
*丈, "length"
*雄, "mascu ...
's two-meson theory of 1942, which also involved two neutrinos.
[
][
]
In 1962
Leon M. Lederman,
Melvin Schwartz and
Jack Steinberger proved the existence of the muon neutrino in an experiment at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory.
[
] This earned them the
1988 Nobel Prize.
[
]
Speed
In September 2011
OPERA researchers reported that muon neutrinos were apparently traveling at
faster than
light speed. This result was confirmed again in a second experiment in November 2011. These results were viewed skeptically by the scientific community at large, and more experiments investigated the phenomenon. In March 2012 the
ICARUS
In Greek mythology, Icarus (; grc, Ἴκαρος, Íkaros, ) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, King Minos suspe ...
team published results directly contradicting the results of OPERA.
Later, in July 2012, the apparent anomalous super-luminous propagation of neutrinos was traced to a faulty element of the fibre optic timing system in Gran-Sasso. After it was corrected the neutrinos appeared to travel with the speed of light within the errors of the experiment.
See also
*
Electron neutrino
*
Neutrino oscillation
*
PMNS matrix
*
Tau neutrino
References
Further reading
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Muon Neutrino
Neutrinos
Leptons
Elementary particles