How many kinds of Neutrino are there

Mass and interactions (flavor) point out 3 light types of neutrinos. The three light flavors (electron, muon, and tau eigenstates) are not mass eigenstates which gives rise to a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation where a beam of pure flavor eigenstate does not stay pure. This is evidence that the mass eigenvalues are not all the same.
http://pdg.lbl.gov/2016/mobile/reviews/pdf/rpp2016-rev-neutrino-mixing-m.pdf
 
rpenner said:
Mass and interactions (flavor) point out 3 light types of neutrinos. The three light flavors (electron, muon, and tau eigenstates) are not mass eigenstates which gives rise to a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation where a beam of pure flavor eigenstate does not stay pure. This is evidence that the mass eigenvalues are not all the same.
http://pdg.lbl.gov/2016/mobile/reviews/pdf/rpp2016-rev-neutrino-mixing-m.pdf
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If understand correctly from you, there are 3 ( electron,muon and tau ) as far you site , is beautiful intimidating, I wonder how many experiment have been done to create such mass of data .
 
timojin said:
If understand correctly from you, there are 3 ( electron,muon and tau ) as far you site , is beautiful intimidating, I wonder how many experiment have been done to create such mass of data .
Click to expand...
If you really want to know maybe you could ask K. Nakamura (Kavli IPMU (WPI), U. Tokyo, KEK), and S.T. Petcov (SISSA/INFN Trieste, Kavli IPMU (WPI), U. Tokyo, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) who updated the literature.
 
timojin said:
How do you distinguish Neutrinos ? is it done by mass or by some property
Click to expand...
timojin said:
If understand correctly from you, there are 3 ( electron,muon and tau ) as far you site , is beautiful intimidating, I wonder how many experiment have been done to create such mass of data .
Click to expand...
Yes, there are three types or "flavours" of neutrinos, which you have listed.

As rpenner said, the three types have different masses, and interact with other particles in somewhat different ways - particular in their usual method of production.

There are lots of different kinds of experiments that show there are three different types.

For a long time, the "solar neutrino problem" remained unsolved - the Sun seemed to be producing too many of one type of neutrino and too few of another type. But, as rpenner mentioned briefly, the problem was solved by postulating neutrino oscillations - that is, as neutrinos travel through space they can actually change flavour. Our experiments detecting neutrinos from the Sun only detected one type of neutrino.

Each type, by the way, also has an antiparticle, so there are a anti-electron neutrinos, anti-mu neutrinos etc.
 
timojin said:
If understand correctly from you, there are 3 ( electron,muon and tau ) as far you site , is beautiful intimidating, I wonder how many experiment have been done to create such mass of data .
Click to expand...
The ongoing experiments with neutrinos began over 40 years ago with the primitive neutrino detector deployed by Nobel laureate Ray Davis and his team at the Homestake mine in South Dakota. It consisted of a large tank of perchloroethane (dry cleaning fluid) and a means for processing and counting the number of argon atoms produced when a neutrino of a particular flavor interacted with the chlorine atoms in the perchloroethane molecules. This kicked off the thirty year Mystery of the Missing Solar Neutrinos, a riveting saga which eventually led to both the discovery of the missing solar neutrino flux, and the discovery of neutrino oscillations and the two other flavors of neutrinos, not to mention fixing a precise value for the age of our sun.

One of Ray's former colleagues at Homestake is still a close personal friend.

I rate this discovery to be one of the greatest in the history of science, rating right up there with Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Such discoveries happen seldom, but change our view of the universe in a profound way. Because of Newton, we no longer wonder whether the Earth's orbit may decay, crashing into the Sun. Because of Ray, we no longer wonder if the Sun will go red giant tomorrow.

All because of a near insignificant, and near massless particle proposed by Wolfgang Pauli before an audience many of whom doubted its existence. Such things still happen today. Near insignificant scientific discrepancies can matter a great deal.

And so, if we were ever to travel to any of the newly discovered exoplanets orbiting distant stars, a knowledge of the dynamics of the neutrino will no doubt continue to be an area of science that is of intense interest.
 
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