Novel ways to probe effective neutrino interactions

June 6, 2022
3:00pm to 4:00pm

IFT Red Room

Theoretical Physics, general interest
Speaker: 
Julia Harz
Institution: 
Munich, Tech U. (TUM)
Location&Place: 

IFT Red Room

Abstract: 

With neutrino oscillations pointing us towards massive neutrinos, they are a clear hint towards physics beyond the standard model. With a bright and diverse landscape of current and future experiments, novel approaches are being developed to probe the nature and interactions of neutrinos.
First, I will talk about possible dim-5 interactions, in particular transition magnetic moments, and will discuss the sensitivity of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering experiments to probe the nature and interactions of neutrinos. In particular, I will introduce a new smoking gun signal, a radiative up-scattering process with a photon emitted in the final state, which will be able to probe neutrino transition magnetic moments beyond existing limits. Most importantly, I will highlight that such a new experimental mode has the potential to distinguish between the Majorana and Dirac nature of light active neutrinos.
I will then continue with higher dimensional lepton-number violating interactions and discuss the interesting interplay between different observables such as meson decays, neutrinoless double beta decay and LHC searches. In particular, I will highlight the potential of the NA62 experiment, aiming to reach SM precision in $K \rightarrow \pi \nu \bar{\nu}$, to tell us more about the nature of neutrinos.