I. Theoretical aspects of high energy neutrino interactions

Abstract

In recent years high energy neutrinos produced at the large accelerators have been used to investigate the properties of weak interactions. As a result we know now that there are at least two kinds of neutrinos, and that an eventual intermediate vector boson is heavier than 2 GeV. In addition, the conventional theory of weak interactions has been tested in a larger domain, and found to be in reasonable agreement with experiment; in particular, strange particle production does not exceed appreciably what is predicted by Cabibbo’s theory, which may be inter­preted as further evidence against the older universal Fermi interaction theory. Thus the situation at this moment is quite satisfactory, as far as the established notions on weak interactions are concerned. We may now ask to what extent high energy neutrino physics may be used as a tool to extend our knowledge of the weak interactions.