The 11th Annual Pappalardo Fellowships in Physics Symposium:
May 18, 2012
More than 80 years after its proposed existence, the neutrino remains mysterious and enigmatic. We don’t know the mass of the neutrino, how many neutrinos there are, if neutrinos are different than anti-neutrinos, and more. I will describe one of the neutrino’s most interesting properties, referred to as “oscillation” or “mixing,” and our attempts to understand it. Specifically, I will discuss Double Chooz, a nuclear reactor-based neutrino oscillation experiment and its pursuit of the last mixing angle.
Josh grew up in Denver, Colorado, and graduated summa cum laude in physics (with a double major in astronomy) from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He recently completed his Ph.D. dissertation with Prof. Bonnie Fleming at Yale University. Currently, Josh is involved in carefully measuring the properties of the neutrino, one of nature’s fundamental particles, and trying to understand the role of the neutrino in the evolution of the universe.
