Physics Colloquium, October 25, 2005

The Drama of Neutrino Masses, Unification and Our Origin

Jogesh Pati

University of Maryland

Since the discovery of the atmospheric and solar neutrino oscillations, the neutrinos have emerged as being among the most effective probes into the nature of higher unification. Although almost the feeblest of all the entities of nature, simply by virtue of their tiny masses, they seem to possess a subtle clue to some of the deepest laws of nature pertaining to the unification scale and(even more important) to the nature of the unification symmetry. In this sense the neutrinos provide us with a rare window to view physics at truly short distances. As we will see these turn out to be as short as about 10^-30 cm. In addition, it appears most likely that the origin of their tiny masses may be at the root of the origin of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the early universe. In short, the neutrinos may be crucial to shedding light not only on unification but also on our own origin!

The colloquium will expose these features, and exhibit how a host of empirical findings, including neutrino oscillations, seem to go extremely well with some of the ideas of grand unification, proposed in the early 70's, that treat lepton number as the fourth color.

3:30 p.m., Robert Smith Seminar Room 1080, PRB

Refreshments served at 3:00 p.m., Atrium, PRB