Neutrinos Transform the Universe: Researchers Validate the Theory
In an international initially, an investigation team led by Kavli IPMU Principal Investigator Naoki Yoshida successfully conducted a 6-dimensional simulation of neutrinos travelling through the universe.
The consequences of practically massless subatomic particles known as neutrinos on the creation of galaxies has long been a cosmic riddle, one that scientists have struggled to solve since the particles’ discovery in the year 1956.
In contrast, a global scientific group developed cosmological models that exactly portray the function of neutrinos in the evolution of the universe. Naoki Yoshida, the director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) and Professor of Physics at the University of Tokyo, is part of this team.Their findings were recently published in The Journal of Astrophysics.
The investigation is a turning point in the simulation process of the structure of the universe, according to Dr. Shun Saito, a cosmologist from Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), assistant professor of physics, and a researcher in the study. Saito also works as a visiting associate researcher at Kavli IPMU.
They used a set of differential equations known as the Vlasov-Poisson equations to explain how neutrinos of variable mass quantities move through space.
Their findings show that neutrinos limit the grouping of dark matter, the universe’s undefined mass, and, as a result, galaxies. They revealed that neutrino-rich regions are tightly linked to massive galaxy clusters and that the effective temperature of neutrinos varies significantly depending on their mass.
“In general, such as the findings we obtained agree with theoretical predictions and previous simulation results,” explains Dr. Kohji Yoshikawa, the study’s lead author and director of the University of Tsukuba’s Center for Computational Sciences. “It’s comforting that the outcomes of two completely different strategies for simulation agree.”
“Our simulations are important because they constrain an unresolved quantity of neutrino mass,” explains Saito of Missouri S&T. “Neutrinos are the lightest particles known. We very recently discovered that neutrinos have mass as a result of a finding included in the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics.”
That value was given to two researchers, including Takaaki Kajita, Kavli IPMU’s Principal Investigator and Director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at the University of Tokyo, for their independent discoveries that one type of neutrino can become another, demonstrating that neutrinos have mass.
“Our work could lead to a strong determination of the neutrino mass,” Saito argues.
Dr. Satoshi Tanaka, a postdoctoral scholar at Kyoto College’s Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, was the fourth researcher in the work titled “Cosmological Vlasov, Poisson Simulations of Structure Formation with Relic Neutrinos: Nonlinear Clustering and the Neutrino Mass.”
Originally published on Asia Research News. Read the original article.
