Speaker:  Dr. George Jones, Department of Physics, University of Northern British Columbia

Abstract:  I will discuss neutrino oscillations, Dirac and Majorana mass, and the see-saw mechanism. The Standard Model of elementary particles contains massless neutrinos, but neutrino oscillations show that at least two neutrino types have non-zero mass. Consequently, the Standard Model needs modification to include neutrinos mass. As uncharged spin 1/2 particles, neutrinos can have Dirac mass, Majorana mass, or both. Particle physicists favour models in which neutrinos have both  Dirac and Majorana mass, as this allows a see-saw mechanism to give neutrinos small masses.