Studying Both the Universe and Neutrinos Themselves Using Cosmic and Astrophysical Neutrinos

Abstract

With neutrino astronomy just beginning to burgeon, and the prospects of detecting the cosmic neutrino background closer than ever, we live in an era with the unique opportunity not only to investigate the universe with this novel probe, but conversely to utilise the cosmos as a laboratory to study neutrinos themselves. This thesis aims to expound on some of the ways to seize this opportunity, using corollaries of our standard model, gravitational lensing, inverse beta decay, and the neutrino's spin to achieve our goals. Theoretically, these tools prove insightful and impressive, but difficulties in experimental precision and a low rate of certain astrophysical events hinder the capabilities of these mechanisms. Regardless, the future of neutrino astronomy is certainly bright.

arXiv comment113 pages, 9 figures, supervised by Masahide Yamaguchi

References in corpus (23)

• Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
• The Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly
• A Measurement of Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillation Parameters by Super-Kamiokande I
• Relic neutrino decoupling including flavour oscillations
• An unidentified line in X-ray spectra of the Andromeda galaxy and Perseus galaxy cluster
• Improved Search for ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }\to {\bar{\nu }}_e$ Oscillations in the MiniBooNE Experiment
• An improved upper limit on the neutrino mass from a direct kinematic method by KATRIN
• Supernova Neutrino Detection
• Planck 2013 results. XXVII. Doppler boosting of the CMB: Eppur si muove
• Nonequilibrium Corrections to the Spectra of Massless Neutrinos in the Early Universe
• Analysis of energy- and time-dependence of supernova shock effects on neutrino crossing probabilities
• Sterile neutrinos help reconcile the observational results of primordial gravitational waves from Planck and BICEP2
• Lectures on Gravitational Lensing
• Expected Signals in Relic Neutrino Detectors
• Tritium $\beta$-decay in chiral effective field theory
• Exact relativistic beta decay endpoint spectrum
• Annual Modulation of Cosmic Relic Neutrinos
• Gravitational Lensing of Supernova Neutrinos
• Cosmic Neutrino Last Scattering Surface
• Precise Capture Rates of Cosmic Neutrinos and Their Implications on Cosmology
• Do non-relativistic neutrinos oscillate?
• The New SI and the CODATA recommended values of the fundamental constants 2017 compared with 2014, with a Comment to Possolo et al., Metrologia 55 (2018) 29
• Proving the conservation of surface brightness during the strong and weak lensing of light by an isothermal sphere