Research, Heart experiment researchers unravel new mysteries about neutrinos

New mysteries about neutrino behavior have been revealed by a team of researchers from Infn Gran Sasso. A team of researchers from the Heart experiment (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) located at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn) published today, April 6, in Nature the new results on the nature of the neutrino, which also demonstrate the exceptional nature of the technology developed, capable of maintaining a detector weighing over 700 kilos at temperatures close to absolute zero for more than three years. Cuore, which operates in the cosmic silence of the underground experimental rooms of the Gran Sasso Laboratories, protected by 1,400 meters of rock, is one of the most sensitive experiments in the world for the study of a nuclear process, called double beta decay without neutrino emission, possible only if neutrino and antineutrino are the same particle. The researchers explain that this decay, if observed, would clarify for the first time the mystery of the Majorana nature of the neutrino. Cuore’s findings are based on data collected over the past three years that is ten times greater than any other research with a similar experimental technique. Despite its phenomenal sensitivity, the experiment has not yet observed evidence of events of this type, the Infn clarifies, adding that from this result it is possible to establish that a tellurium atom takes more than 22 million billion billion years to decay. . Cuore’s new limits on neutrino behavior are crucial in the search for a possible new discovery in particle physics, which would be revolutionary because it would help to understand our own origins. “The goal is to understand how matter originated” explains Carlo Bucci, researcher at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories and international manager of the Cuore experiment. “We are looking for a process that violates a fundamental symmetry of nature,” adds Roger Huang, a young researcher at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the authors of the new study. “The asymmetry between matter and antimatter in the universe is still a puzzle,” says Huang. “If the neutrinos are their own antiparticles, this could help solve it,” he adds. Danielle Speller, professor at Johns Hopkins University and member of the Physics Board of Cuore points out that “neutrino-free double beta decay, if measured, will be the rarest process ever observed in nature, with a decay time of over one million. billions of times higher than the age of the universe “.