4 ms·

Is there any reason to think that Gallium would be a particularly good source of sterile neutrinos? Or is it more that if regular neutrinos oscillate into steri

Is there any reason to think that Gallium would be a particularly good source of sterile neutrinos? Or is it more that if regular neutrinos oscillate into sterile neutrinos, then this would be the first experiment that could detect so at this scale?

pavel_lishin 2y ago
The gallium isn't what's producing the neutrinos; there's a radioactive source that the gallium is being irradiated by, and I believe that's the source: > In an underground lab shielded by a mountain of rock, highly radioactive material sits inside a vat of liquid gallium, blasting out particles called neutrinos that break the gallium down into atoms of germanium.
gus_massa 2y ago
Gallium is not a source of sterile neutrino. Gallium is a good "electonic neutrino" target. The problem is that they only detect the 80% of the "electonic neutrino" that they expect and they have no clue of the cause. One of the posibilities is that the other 20% of the "electonic neutrinos" mutate to "sterile neutrinos" during the trip. (Note that there are 3 types of neutrinos and it's possible that there are also a few types of sterile neutrinos (3 is a good guess).)
- dmurray 2y ago
  I'd still like to ask a version of the same question, is gallium so special that it only makes sense to do this experiment with gallium? If sterile neutrinos cause the production of germanium from gallium to be 80% of what we thought it was, will there be other nuclear reactions that we now don't understand? E.g. a given plutonium reaction produces 100g of uranium, currently consistent with the theoretical model, after sterile neutrinos are confirmed will we be saying hang on, this should only produce 80g of uranium with the new model, something else is wrong? Presumably not, at least with well-understood reactions, so why is gallium so special here?
  - gus_massa 2y ago
    It's a good question. In another experiment they are measuring the decay form germanium to gallium, and in this experiment they are forcing an "udecay" fro gallium to germanium. I think both decaya are too complex to be calculated theoricaly, but the rates can be compared and in the comparison they note the problem. * Perhaps the energy of the decay is small and it's easy to get neutrinos with enough energy to revert it??? * The ammount of gallium they get is tiny, perhaps it's easier to process a liquid target to detect it???

pavel_lishin 2y ago

The gallium isn't what's producing the neutrinos; there's a radioactive source that the gallium is being irradiated by, and I believe that's the source: > In an underground lab shielded by a mountain of rock, highly radioactive material sits inside a vat of liquid gallium, blasting out particles called neutrinos that break the gallium down into atoms of germanium.

gus_massa 2y ago

Gallium is not a source of sterile neutrino. Gallium is a good "electonic neutrino" target. The problem is that they only detect the 80% of the "electonic neutrino" that they expect and they have no clue of the cause. One of the posibilities is that the other 20% of the "electonic neutrinos" mutate to "sterile neutrinos" during the trip. (Note that there are 3 types of neutrinos and it's possible that there are also a few types of sterile neutrinos (3 is a good guess).)

dmurray 2y ago
I'd still like to ask a version of the same question, is gallium so special that it only makes sense to do this experiment with gallium? If sterile neutrinos cause the production of germanium from gallium to be 80% of what we thought it was, will there be other nuclear reactions that we now don't understand? E.g. a given plutonium reaction produces 100g of uranium, currently consistent with the theoretical model, after sterile neutrinos are confirmed will we be saying hang on, this should only produce 80g of uranium with the new model, something else is wrong? Presumably not, at least with well-understood reactions, so why is gallium so special here?
- gus_massa 2y ago
  It's a good question. In another experiment they are measuring the decay form germanium to gallium, and in this experiment they are forcing an "udecay" fro gallium to germanium. I think both decaya are too complex to be calculated theoricaly, but the rates can be compared and in the comparison they note the problem. * Perhaps the energy of the decay is small and it's easy to get neutrinos with enough energy to revert it??? * The ammount of gallium they get is tiny, perhaps it's easier to process a liquid target to detect it???