Neutrini in profondit\`a: Vita, morte e miracoli dei neutrini rivelati sotto terra, sotto i ghiacci o in fondo al mare

TL;DR

This paper reviews the detection and study of naturally occurring neutrinos from astrophysical sources, highlighting their role in advancing particle physics and astrophysics through underground and underwater experiments.

Contribution

It provides an overview of neutrino detection methods and discusses recent discoveries in neutrino oscillations and astrophysical insights gained from these elusive particles.

Findings

Discovery of neutrino oscillations

Advances in understanding solar and stellar processes

Development of large-scale underground and underwater detectors

Abstract

The neutrino is the most elusive particle that we know and for many years physicists doubted that neutrinos might never be revealed. Today we know and we reveal neutrinos produced by different astrophysical objects and by interactions of cosmic rays (natural neutrinos) or produced by nuclear reactors and as secondary particles in accelerators (artificial neutrinos). This paper focus on naturally occurring neutrinos, the disclosure of which requires enormous experimental apparatus in underground laboratories, under water or under the ice of the South Pole. They have allowed huge advances in understanding of neutrino properties with the discovery of the oscillation mechanism. And at the same time they opened new frontiers for the study of astrophysics of the processes that produce energy inside the Sun; on the mechanisms leading to stellar gravitational collapses; on astrophysical objects that produce cosmic rays up to extreme energies.