Breakthrough Prize 2016

News, 08 November 2015

At an official Ceremony in Silicon Valley on  November 8, 2015 the winners of a prestigious scientific award — Breakthrough Prize 2016 in Fundamental Physics were announced. The participants of five experiments Daya Bay, KamLAND, Super-Kamiokande, SNO and T2K/K2K were awarded for discovery and research of neutrino osсillations. JINR takes an active part in the experiment of Daya Bay which in 2012 discovered the nonzero value of a mixing angle of a neutrino θ13. The Laureates from JINR are: the participants of Daya Bay experiment: M.O. Gonchar, Yu.A. Gornushkin, D.V. Naumov, I.B. Nemchenok, A.G. Olshevski, and also E.A. Yakushev (KamLAND), V.A. Matveev and B.A. Popov (T2K).

The Breakthrough Prizes, which honors advances in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences, and Mathematics, were founded in 2012 by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri Milner and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and is the most important prize awarded for research in these fields.

Neutrino oscillations is a "hot issue" in physics of elementary particles, astrophysics and cosmology. The Nobel Prize on physics of 2015 was awarded for neutrino oscillation discovery. It is the fourth Nobel Prize dedicated to this mysterious particle, and this year another important award is given to Neutrino oscillation – the Breakthrough Prize.

A number of important experiments and projects in neutrino physics is covered by JINR Neutrino Program which joints efforts of a big working group of physicists, chemists and engineers. JINR Neutrino Program is indeed the widest in neutrino physics among all scientific centers of the world. Therefore, the fundamental results in this area of research in JINR can be expected in the nearest future.

Entire article (in Russian)