We study the interaction of low energy neutrinos on nuclei that spontaneously undergo beta decay showing that the product of the cross section times neutrino velocity takes values as high as 10 cm c for some specific nuclei that decay via allowed transitions. The absence of energy threshold and the value of the cross section single out these processes as a promising though very demanding approa...

Double beta decay is a rare nuclear process changing the nuclear charge by two units leaving atomic number unchanged. The detection of the neutrino accompanied mode (A,Z)?(A,Z+2)+2e+ 2n e: with half-lives around 10 20 years is among the rarest decays ever observed. Of outmost importance for particle physics and especially neutrino physics, is the neutrinoless mode (A,Z)?(A,Z+2)+2e. This process...

The detection of neutrinos from SN1987A confirmed the core-collapse nature of SN II, but the neutrinos were not noticed until after the optical discovery. The current generation of neutrino experiments are both much larger and actively looking for SN neutrinos in real time. Since neutrinos escape a new SN promptly while the first photons are not produced until the photospheric shock breakout ho...

We investigate non-standard Hamiltonian effects on neutrino oscillations, which are effective additional contributions to the vacuum or matter Hamiltonian. Since these effects can enter in either flavor or mass basis, we develop an understanding of the difference between these bases representing the underlying theoretical model. In particular, the simplest of these effects are classified as “pu...

Neutrino oscillations are experimentally observable only as a result of interference between neutrino states with different masses and THE SAME ENERGY. All interference effects between neutrino states having different energies are destroyed by the intereaction between the incident neutrino and the neutrino detector. Erroneous results are frequently obtained by neglecting the neutrino-detector i...

The α-decay rates for the nuclides 168,170,171,172,173,174,176Yb and 148,150,152,154Gd have been estimated from transmission probabilities in a systematic α-nucleus potential and from an improved fit to α-decay rates in the rare-earth mass region. Whereas α-decay of Gd in natural gadolinium is a severe obstacle for the use of gadolinium as a low-energy solar-neutrino detector, we show that α-de...

The ANTARES collaboration is building a deep underwater neutrino Cerenkov telescope at 2400 m which will be located off the Mediterranean sea coast near Toulon, France. The main scientific aims of the experiment are the detection of high energy upgoing muons coming from astrophysical neutrinos, indirect dark matter searches, the study of atmospheric neutrino oscillations. The detector will be c...

Magnetized steel-scintillator tracking calorimeter detector has been considered as a candidate of detectors to study νe → νμ oscillation (“golden”) channel in a Neutrino Factory. The MINOS detector is based on the technology and has been observing atmospheric neutrinos since 2003, as well as beam neutrinos since 2005. The performance of muon neutrino detection by the MINOS detector is discussed...

The 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics is shared equally by the American physicists Frederick J. Reines and Martin L. Perl for their pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics. Following is a brief account of their discoveries. This is the year of the leptons. Of the six leptons of today's particle physics, Nobel Prizes were awarded earlier for discovering two of them: the electron and th...