Experimental HEP Seminar

Measuring the Mass of Neutrinos

Kevin Graham

Carleton University

Neutrinos were initially proposed to exist in 1930 to solve the beta decay puzzle. Twenty-six years passed before neutrinos were experimentally shown to exist, in 1956, and approximately another forty-four before it was demonstrated that they have mass. But the question still remains, what is the mass of the neutrinos?

A brief summary of neutrino physics will be provided with emphasis on efforts to measure neutrino mass. Current efforts underway to measure the neutrino mass scale will be presented with focus placed on search for the rare process called neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ). Details of the Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO) experiment and its prospects for discovering 0νββ will be presented.