Experimental results on atmospheric neutrinos

Abstract

Atmospheric neutrinos arise from the decay of mesons produced by the interactions of high energy cosmic rays with nuclei in the Earth's atmosphere. Studies of the interactions of these neutrinos are sensitive to the fundamental properties of neutrinos such as neutrino mass and neutrino flavour mixing. Because the energies of these neutrinos range from less than 1 GeV to more than 10 TeV, and because the distances from the production site to the detector range from 10 to 10000 km, the range of neutrino mass differences sampled is large and extends to lower values than is presently accessible to accelerator experiments. This paper summarizes the status of experimental results on atmospheric neutrinos and the possible interpretations of these results.