Neutrinos from the big bang: probing cosmic gravitational inhomogeneities and magnetic fields en route to eventual detection

Professor Gordon Baym - Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe & Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Neutrinos from the big bang: probing cosmic gravitational inhomogeneities and magnetic fields en route to eventual detection

Abstract
Primordial neutrinos from the Big Bang are about 100 times more prevalent than solar neutrinos, and at least two-thirds of them are now non-relativistic. These relic neutrinos, which have never been detected, decoupled in the early universe predominantly in helicity eigenstates. As this talk will discuss, their subsequent propagation through gravitational inhomogeneities and even background gravitational radiation, as well as cosmic and galactic magnetic fields partially flips their helicities, and can produce noticeable effects in their eventual detection.