Proceedings of the International Conference on Future Prospects in Neutrino and Astroparticle Physics

This book presents peer-reviewed articles from the International Conference on Future Prospects in Neutrino and Astroparticle Physics (ICFPNAP 2024), held on Jan 23–24 at Assam Don Bosco University, Assam, India. It highlights recent breakthroughs in neutrino and astroparticle physics as well as its future prospects. Neutrino physics is currently one of the most fascinating fields of study, and it is expected that future generations of long and short-baseline neutrino experiments will be able to resolve many important issues such as CP violation, neutrino mass hierarchy, octant degeneracy, the existence of sterile neutrinos, and so on. The discovery of neutrino oscillations has already shown that neutrinos are massive and that we must look beyond the Standard Model (BSM). Many well-motivated BSM frameworks exist to explain the nonzero but tiny neutrino mass, such as the seesaw mechanism, which involves the addition of heavy fermions in the theory. The detection of a lepton number violating process in neutrinoless double beta decay experiments could be a probe for Majorana neutrinos, as anticipated by the seesaw mechanism. This book emphasizes neutrino physics in general, as well as its connections to dark matter, astrophysics, and cosmology.

Dr. J. W. F. Valle received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Syracuse University in 1982 and is currently a professor at IFIC (Instituto de Fsica Corpuscular) at the University of Valencia, Spain. He also holds the position of Full Professor at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). He is well-known for his extensive contributions to theoretical astroparticle and high energy physics, particularly neutrino physics. Prof. Valle is well-known for his outstanding contributions to the theory of neutrino mass. He has offered the first comprehensive study of the numerous mechanisms of neutrino mass generation (including versions of the seesaw mechanism) in a pioneering paper with Joseph Schechter. The same authors also developed the Schechter-Valle theorem, which states that a discovery of neutrinoless double beta decay implies neutrinos are Majorana fermions and vice versa.

Dr. Sandhya Choubey is a professor in the Department of Physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Her research areas include neutrino physics and dark matter. She completed her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Calcutta in 2002 and worked as postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southampton, UK, SISSA, Italy, and University of Oxford, UK. She worked at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, India, from 2006 until 2019, after which she joined KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Dr. Debasish Borah is an associate professor in the dept. of Physics at IIT Guwahati. He is a theoretical physicist who works in the field of neutrino physics, dark matter, baryogenesis, and related areas. He received the prestigious Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award from the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), in 2019 and the Young Scientist Medal from the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in 2020 for his outstanding contribution to theoretical physics.

Dr. Rahul Srivastava obtained his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and later joined the Mathematical Sciences department in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, as a postdoctoral fellow. He then joined the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, followed by the Astroparticle and High Energy Physics Group at the Instituto de Fisica Corpuscular in Valencia, Spain. He is currently working as an assistant professor at IISER, Bhopal, India. He is a theoretical physicist, whose research interests are in the areas of neutrino physics, dark matter physics, Higgs and collider physics, beyond Standard Model physics, and gravity waves.

Dr. Debajyoti Dutta obtained his Ph.D. from Gauhati University in Assam, followed by post-doctoral research at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, India. He started as an assistant professor in the physics department of Assam Don Bosco University and worked there for more than five years. He served as the head of the physics department for two years at ADBU. Currently, he is working as an assistant professor at Bhattadev University, Assam, India. His research interests are in the areas of neutrino oscillation physics, beyond Standard Model physics, and neutrino mass models.