Prof. Dr. Heinrich Päs

"Our research group explores neutrinos and their role as probes for particle physics beyond the Standard Model, cosmology, and the foundations of quantum physics. Neutrinos are mavericks in the particle zoo: they are electrically neutral and therefore hardly interact, they are much lighter than the other known fermions in the Standard Model, and their flavors mix much more strongly than quarks. It is precisely these properties that make neutrinos a particularly exciting object of research: for example, each cubic centimeter of the universe is said to contain about 330 neutrinos, which thus contribute about as much to the mass of the universe as all the stars combined. Neutrinos thus share many properties with the enigmatic dark matter in the universe. In addition, neutrinos could be their own antiparticles, resolving the question of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe, propagating in a fourth or fifth dimension of space, and maintaining quantum coherence over cosmological distance scales. The exploration of the neutrino sector has just begun and surely holds many more surprises!"

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