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Direct experimental constraints on the spatial extent of a neutrino wavepacket

2025-02-12Artigo científico Acesso aberto
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dc.contributor.authorSmolsky, Joseph
dc.contributor.authorLeach, Kyle G.
dc.contributor.authorAbells, Ryan
dc.contributor.authorAmaro, Pedro
dc.contributor.authorAndoche, Adrien
dc.contributor.authorBorbridge, Keith
dc.contributor.authorBray, Connor
dc.contributor.authorCantor, Robin
dc.contributor.authorDiercks, David
dc.contributor.authorFretwell, Spencer
dc.contributor.authorFriedrich, Stephan
dc.contributor.authorGillespie, Abigail
dc.contributor.authorGuerra, Mauro
dc.contributor.authorHall, Ad
dc.contributor.authorHarris, Cameron N.
dc.contributor.authorHarris, Jackson T.
dc.contributor.authorHayen, Leendert M.
dc.contributor.authorHervieux, Paul Antoine
dc.contributor.authorHinkle, Calvin
dc.contributor.authorKim, Geon Bo
dc.contributor.authorKim, Inwook
dc.contributor.authorLamm, Amii
dc.contributor.authorLennarz, Annika
dc.contributor.authorLordi, Vincenzo
dc.contributor.authorMachado, Jorge
dc.contributor.authorMarino, Andrew
dc.contributor.authorMcKeen, David
dc.contributor.authorMougeot, Xavier
dc.contributor.authorPonce, Francisco
dc.contributor.authorRuiz, Chris
dc.contributor.authorSamanta, Amit
dc.contributor.authorSantos, José Paulo
dc.contributor.authorStone-Whitehead, Caitlyn
dc.contributor.authorTaylor, John
dc.contributor.authorTemplet, Joseph
dc.contributor.authorUpadhyayula, Sriteja
dc.contributor.authorWagner, Louis
dc.contributor.authorWarburton, William K.
dc.contributor.institutionDF – Departamento de Física
dc.contributor.institutionLIBPhys-UNL
dc.contributor.pblNature Publishing Group
dc.date.accessioned2025-07-04T21:16:36Z
dc.date.available2025-07-04T21:16:36Z
dc.date.issued2025-02-12
dc.descriptionFunding Information: We thank D. Moore, D. Carney, B. Jones, C. Argüelles-Delgado, J. Formaggio and F. Sarazin for useful discussions. The BeEST experiment is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (no. 10.37807/GBMF11571); the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, under award nos. DE-SC0021245 and SCW1758; the LLNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development program through grant nos. 19-FS-027 and 20-LW-006; the European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (EMPIR) project nos. 17FUN02 MetroMMC and 20FUN09 PrimA-LTD; and the FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal)—through national funds in the framework of the project no. UID/04559/2020 (LIBPhys). TRIUMF receives federal funding through a contribution agreement with the National Research Council of Canada. This work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by LLNL under contract no. DE-AC52-07NA27344. F.P. is funded as part of the Open Call Initiative at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and conducted under the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is a multiprogram national laboratory operated by Battelle for the US Department of Energy. K.G.L. acknowledges support from the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) while on sabbatical. FRIB is a US Department of Energy, Office of Science User Facility, under award no. DE-SC0000661. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025.
dc.description.abstractDespite their high relative abundance in our Universe, neutrinos are the least understood fundamental particles of nature. In fact, the quantum properties of neutrinos emitted in experimentally relevant sources are theoretically contested1, 2, 3–4 and the spatial extent of the neutrino wavepacket is only loosely constrained by reactor neutrino oscillation data with a spread of 13 orders of magnitude5,6. Here we present a method to directly access this quantity by precisely measuring the energy width of the recoil daughter nucleus emitted in the radioactive decay of beryllium-7. The final state in the decay process contains a recoiling lithium-7 nucleus, which is entangled with an electron neutrino at creation. The lithium-7 energy spectrum is measured to high precision by directly embedding beryllium-7 radioisotopes into a high-resolution superconducting tunnel junction that is operated as a cryogenic sensor. Under this approach, we set a lower limit on the Heisenberg spatial uncertainty of the recoil daughter of 6.2 pm, which implies that the final-state system is localized at a scale more than a thousand times larger than the nucleus itself. From this measurement, the first, to our knowledge, direct lower limit on the spatial extent of a neutrino wavepacket is extracted. These results may have implications in several areas including the theoretical understanding of neutrino properties, the nature of localization in weak nuclear decays and the interpretation of neutrino physics data.en
dc.description.versionpublishersversion
dc.description.versionpublished
dc.format.extent5
dc.format.extent2069394
dc.identifier.doi10.1038/s41586-024-08479-6
dc.identifier.issn0028-0836
dc.identifier.otherPURE: 112978175
dc.identifier.otherPURE UUID: f66137c4-1b3e-4be4-80b4-af23cb5a12be
dc.identifier.otherScopus: 85217802393
dc.identifier.otherPubMed: 39939769
dc.identifier.otherWOS: 001418886800001
dc.identifier.otherPubMedCentral: PMC11839472
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0001-6286-4048/work/187257866
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0002-5890-0971/work/187257907
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10362/184834
dc.identifier.urlhttps://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85217802393
dc.identifier.urlhttps://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:001418886800001
dc.language.isoeng
dc.peerreviewedyes
dc.subjectGeneral
dc.titleDirect experimental constraints on the spatial extent of a neutrino wavepacketen
dc.typejournal article
degois.publication.firstPage640
degois.publication.lastPage644
degois.publication.titleNature
degois.publication.volume638
dspace.entity.typePublication
rcaap.rightsopenAccess

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