Abstract
Although the neutrino was discovered about sixty years ago, we know very little about this ghostly elementary particle. For a long time, people thought the neutrinos were massless. However, the tide began to turn when we studied neutrinos originating from the Sun and the atmosphere in the eighties and nineties. Scientists have observed that a neutrino moving in space can morph its identity, a fascinating phenomenon called neutrino oscillation. Furthermore, the existence of neutrino oscillation implies the neutrinos do possess mass after all. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the remarkable discoveries of neutrino oscillation. In this talk, a brief history of the neutrino, the discoveries of neutrino oscillation, and some of the remaining open questions of neutrino physics will be presented.
About the speaker
Prof Kam-Biu Luk received his BS in Physics from the University of Hong Kong in 1976 and PhD from Rutgers University in 1983. He has been a faculty member of the University of California at Berkeley since 1989 and is currently Professor of Physics. He is also a senior faculty member in the Physics Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Prof Luk has conducted research on neutrino oscillation and CP violations. He is the leader of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, assembling a team of multinational researchers from US, Mainland China, Taiwan and the Czech Republic. He and his collaborator, Prof Yifang Wang (Institute of High Energy Physics at Beijing), were awarded the 2014 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics of the American Physical Society "for their leadership of the Daya Bay experiment, which produced the first definitive measurement of θ13 angle of the neutrino mixing matrix". The Daya Bay experiment led by Prof Luk and Prof Wang has also been awarded the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics together with four other experiments in recognition for their work in investigating neutrino oscillation.
Prof Luk is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Divisional Coordinator of High-energy Physics of the International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers.
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