MiniBooNE
Mini Boone is an experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to observe neutrino oscillations ( Boone is an acronym for Booster Neutrino Experiment ). A neutrino beam consisting mainly of muon neutrinos is directed to a detector, which contains 800 tons of mineral oil and is equipped with 1280 photomultipliers. An excess of electron neutrino events in the detector would support the interpretation of neutrino oscillation of the LSND result.
History and Motivation
The observation of solar neutrinos and atmospheric neutrinos are evidence for neutrino oscillations. This assumes that neutrinos have a rest mass. Data from the LSND at Los Alamos National Laboratory are controversial because they are in the context of the standard model is not compatible with the other neutrino oscillation parameters experiments. Either the standard model must be extended or one of the experimental results, it must have another explanation. In addition, the KARMEN experiment in Karlsruhe has examined a similar region as the LSND experiment. There were no signs of neutrino oscillations, but this experiment was less sensitive than the LSND experiment. Both, however, are compatible with each other within the error tolerances.
Cosmological data limit the mass of the sterile neutrinos indirectly. But that is very model dependent. So ms ( 99.9%) confidence level was < 0.26 eV (0.44 eV) estimated at 95 %. However, the cosmological data can be accommodated within models in accordance with different assumptions.
Mini Boone was designed to verify in a controlled environment the controversial LSND - or falsify. There were the first results end of March 2007 and showed no evidence for the oscillation of muon neutrinos to electron neutrinos in the energy ranges of the LSND experiment. Thus, the interpretation of the LSND experiment is refuted as a simple two - neutrino oscillation. The Mini Boone collaboration is also conducting additional analyzes of their data. There is preliminary evidence for the existence of sterile neutrinos. It is considered by some physicists as indication of the presence of bulk or Lorentz injury. To investigate this, some members of the Mini - Boone teams have joined forces with other scientists to a new collaboration to design a new experiment with the name Micro Boone.