The decade of the neutrino
Speaking experimentally, the past decade has been the "Decade of the Neutrino." It produced neutrino experiments across three continents, going from the lab, to the nuclear reactor, to the atmosphere, to the sun, and back to the nuclear reactor. Along the way the experimental results modified the Standard Model of particle interactions, opened a window to "new physics," and broke (and then fixed) the Standard Solar Model. Perhaps no other particle has led us on such a rich and varied journey.
SPIRES, the high-energy physics literature database, identifies 13 scientific papers with over 500 citations in the high-energy physics experiment e-print archive, hep-ex. Nine (full details in link below) of the 13 papers have been about neutrino experiments. (The others include three papers on the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab, and one on the measurement of the muon anomalous magnetic moment at Brookhaven National Laboratory.) Neutrino papers also account for all five (full details in link below) of the top-cited nuclear physics experiment (nucl-ex) publications.
Of all neutrino experiment publications (hep-ex and nucl-ex), the top-cited paper belongs to the Super-Kamiokande collaboration, based in Japan. Cited more than 2300 times, the paper presents evidence for the oscillation of atmospheric muon neutrinos. Second place goes to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada. It rescued the Standard Solar Model by finding evidence for muon and tau solar neutrinos, which were essentially undetectable by Super-Kamiokande. Third place belongs to the CHOOZ collaboration, based in France, for its report on seeing no mixing for electron antineutrinos in a reactorbased experiment. Other topcited experiments include KamLAND (Japan) and LSND (Los Alamos).
Heath O'Connell, Fermilab
The top-cited neutrino experiment publications
Note: Citation counts listed here are as of April 11, 2005.
1) Super-Kamiokande, "Evidence for oscillation of atmospheric neutrinos"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1562-1567 (1998)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 2353 times
2) Sudbury-SNO, "Measurement of the rate of íe + D -> p + p + e- interactions produced by 8B solar neutrinos at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 071301 (2001)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 1037 times
3) CHOOZ, "Limits on Neutrino Oscillations from the CHOOZ Experiment"
Phys. Lett. B466, 415-430 (1999)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 1000 times
4) Sudbury-SNO, "Direct Evidence for Neutrino Flavor Transformation from Neutral-Current Interactions in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 011301 (2002)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 949 times
5) KamLAND, "First Results from KamLAND: Evidence for Reactor Anti-Neutrino Disappearance"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 021802 (2003)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 867 times
6) CHOOZ, "Initial Results from the CHOOZ Long Baseline Reactor Neutrino Oscillation Experiment"
Phys. Lett. B420, 397-404 (1998)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 810 times
7) Super-Kamiokande, Measurement of a small atmospheric íì/íe ratio
Phys. Lett. B433, 9-18 (1998)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 668 times
8) Super-Kamiokande, "Solar 8B and hep Neutrino Measurements from 1258 Days of Super-Kamiokande Data"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5651-5655 (2001)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 662 times
9) LSND, "Evidence for íì to íe Oscillations from the LSND Experiment at LAMPF"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3082-3085 (1996)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 652 times
10) Super-Kamiokande, "Study of the atmospheric neutrino flux in the multi-GeV energy range"
Phys. Lett. B436, 33-41 (1998)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 638 times
11) Sudbury-SNO, "Measurement of Day and Night Neutrino Energy Spectra at SNO and Constraints on Neutrino Mixing Parameters"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 011302 (2002)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 626 times
12) LSND, "Evidence for íì -> íe Neutrino Oscillations from LSND"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1774-1777 (1998)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 607 times
13) Super-Kamiokande, "Tau Neutrinos Favored over Sterile Neutrinos in Atmospheric Muon Neutrino Oscillations"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 3999-4003 (2000)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 555 times
14) Super-Kamiokande, "Measurement of the flux and zenith-angle distribution of upward through-going muons by Super-Kamiokande"
Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2644-2648 (1999)
Journal article | Preprint | Citations
Cited 537 times
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