Plato's Fire and the Pattern of Neutrino Transformations

Abstract

A symmetry known to the ancient Greeks is shown to be applicable in the understanding of the recently established phenomenon of neutrino oscillations. The speaker will show how Plato's thinking is reflected in the theoretical advances which led to the fourth quark, as well as the fifth and sixth quarks. The speaker will then trace the recent history of how "Plato's fire" became the standard reference frame for neutrino mixing.

About the speaker

Prof. Ernest Ma received his PhD from the University of California, Irvine in 1970. He taught at University of Hawaii from 1977-87, and has been a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Riverside since 1987.

Prof. Ma's main research interests are in theoretical particle physics with emphasis on neutrinos and related phenomena. In 1978, he proposed the novel experiment "electron + positron to photon + nothing" as a means to determine the number of families of fundamental particles in the Universe. This prompted the creation of an actual dedicated experiment called "Anomalous Single Photon" (ASP) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the 1980's. Subsequent experiments have now determined this number to be three. In 2001, Prof Ma introduced the non-Abelian discrete symmetry A(4) to the study of neutrino mixing, which has created an active subfield in this area of research.

Prof. Ma was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1996 for his fundamental contributions to gauge theory models and the phenomenology of electroweak interactions.