Stephen Erickson , IT 2009
Measuring the Mass of Neutrinos
Major
Mechanical Engineering
Mentor
Marvin L. Marshak , Physics
Brief Bio
My freshman year I received the hall council Residential Life Award. I enjoy skiing, sailing, and cooking.
Future Plans
I am planning to join the Navy. I will be working in the nuclear power program.
Why Research?
It paid better then Applebees. It was a technical field, but not technically related to my major. It was fun to do.
What Did I Get from Research?
I learned that I do not want to do research. I learned some of the things professors have to do. I learned some basic techniques, and learned some basic data presentation.
How Did I Start?
I talked to Marvin, and asked him what he was doing. Then we met up and did the project. I had the professor as my physics instructor for physics 1 & 2.
My Advice for Another Student:
Do something that they are interested in, and explore your options. Try it to see if you like it. If you do not like it, try something later.
Research Summary
The currently accepted view of the structure of matter incorporates four fundamental forces--the strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational interactions--and twelve fundamental constituents--six strongly-interacting particles called quarks, three charged, non-strongly-interacting particles called the electron, the muon and the tau and three non-strongly-interacting, electrically uncharged particles called neutrinos.
When neutrinos were first hypothesized by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, these particles were thought to be massless. As a result of recent experiments, we now know that these particles have mass. These experiments also show that it is possible for neutrinos to transform spontaneously from one of the three types to another of the three and that the rate of such transformations is related to the mass difference between the initial and the final state. The MINOS experiment sends a beam of mostly muon-type neutrinos from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago to the University of Minnesota Underground Laboratory at Soudan, MN. I have studied neutrino interactions in the MINOS Far Detector and classified these interactions according to the type of the incident neutrino and the type of the interaction. This work has also required recognizing and eliminating interactions resulting from cosmic rays naturally incident on the Earth.
The results of my work will contribute to the ability of the MINOS experiment to observe spontaneous transformations of neutrinos and thus measure neutrino mass.