Neutrino Insights: Peering into the Subatomic Universe

Dear Colleagues,

Despite being the least understood elementary particle, the interest in neutrinos extends nowadays to a large variety of fields in Astrophysics, Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics. In particular, neutrinos are essential for studying astrophysical processes such as solar energy production or supernovae explosions and are also a powerful tool to study hadronic and nuclear properties. Specifically, neutrino-weak interactions allow for the study of QCD properties such as the axial structure and the strangeness content of the nucleons, which are hardly decipherable using electron or photon scattering.

Nevertheless, neutrinos are still elusive particles. They only interact through weak forces and are hardly detectable, so they can only be clearly observed through the detection of the secondary particles produced in the process. For this reason, different nuclear targets are often employed in neutrino experiments in order to increase their detection probability. Thus, a precise study of neutrinos requires an adequate description of their interactions with nuclei and nucleons which constitute one of the largest sources of experimental uncertainties.

One of the most relevant features of neutrinos is the flavor oscillation phenomenon. Neutrino oscillations, which imply that neutrinos are not massless, have brought some limits on the validity of the Standard Model, which does not take proper account of the baryonic matter–antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. In this context, neutrino oscillations have proved their relevance in explaining the violation of CP-symmetry (charge conjugation parity symmetry) in the leptonic sector, though further studies are still required for a clear determination of the neutrino CP-violation (CPV) parameter that would shed light on the evolution of the universe in its early stages.

Accordingly, recent years have witnessed an intense experimental and theoretical activity in connection with accelerator long-baseline neutrino facilities and neutrino observatories for astrophysical events in order to determine the properties of neutrinos and their interaction with matter. The outcomes of these collaborations will be a crucial input towards an accurate determination of CPV and neutrino oscillation parameters and, subsequently, the understanding the matter–antimatter asymmetry of the Universe, as well as for other open questions in Physics, such as the search for dark matter through sterile neutrinos, the proton decay and the analysis of supernovae explosions.

Thus, the present Special Issue aims to provide a melting pot for the discussion of theoretical and experimental analyses in the context of neutrino physics as well as to review the recent progress in the field.

Dr. Guillermo D. Megias
Guest Editor

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