A neutrino is a fermion (an elementary particle with half-integer spin) that interacts only via

the weak subatomic force and gravity.[2][3] The mass of the neutrino is much smaller than that of the
other known elementary particles less than one millionth that of the electron.[1][5] The neutrino is so
named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small (-ino) that it was long
thought to be zero. The weak force has a very short range, gravity is extremely weak on
the subatomic scale, and neutrinos, as leptons, do not participate in the strong interaction. Thus,
neutrinos typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected.[2][3]

Neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the Universe. They, however, are very
difficult to observe. They have no electric charge; hence they do not interact via the electro-
magnetic force. Likewise, they do not interact via the strong nuclear force, by which nucleons
are bound to a nucleus. Neutrinos only interact via the weak force, which is indeed very weak.
The consequence is significant. If a neutrino is produced, it travels straightly in any matter as if it
is traveling in the vacuum. It seldom interacts with matter. For example, a neutrino produced in
the Earth’s atmosphere can easily travel through the whole Earth.
Since it has been extremely difficult to study neutrinos, details of the properties of neutrinos have
not been known.
High energy particles, such as protons and helium nuclei, are continuously raining down
on the earth from space. When these so-called “cosmic rays” collide with atoms in the
atmosphere they produce a “shower” of many kinds of particles. These showers include
pions, kaons, and muons, which produce neutrinos, known as “atmospheric neutrinos,”
when they decay (Figure 1). Atmospheric neutrinos come in two types: electron neutrinos
and muon neutrinos.

While most of a shower's particles are either absorbed by the ground or atmosphere,
neutrinos can travel all the way though the earth since they very rarely interact. Super-
Kamiokande was made as large as possible (50 kilotons) to observe the few that do
interact. In fact, though there are roughly 100 atmospheric neutrinos passing through
each square meter of the planet's surface every second, Super-Kamiokande observes only
eight per day on average.

Since atmospheric neutrinos are produced all over the planet and neutrinos can easily
pass though it, Super-Kamiokande observes neutrinos from all directions. Neutrinos that
are produced above the detector (downward-going) travel a short distance, about 10 km,
while those that are produced below it (upward-going) on the other side of the earth
travel more than 13,000 km (Figure 2) to the detector.
Super-Kamiokande is a neutrino observatory located under Mount Ikeno near the city of
Hida, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. It is located 1,000 m underground in the Mozumi Mine in
Hida's Kamioka area.

a 50 kiloton water Cherenkov detector instrumented with 11,146 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs)
facing an inner 22.5 kiloton fiducial volume of ultra-pure water.

Super-Kamiokande detects atmospheric neutrinos by their interaction with the nuclei

of hydrogen and oxygen in the 22.5 kiloton central fiducial mass of water. The
products of this reaction are usually "fully contained" in the detector volume. The
neutrino flavor is tagged by detecting and identifying the final state lepton (muon or
electron). Low energy (E < 1 GeV) neutrinos typically react by quasi-elastic
scattering, with only the lepton visible in the final state. At higher energies, the final
state muon or electron is often accompanied by a pion (single pi production) or
numerous hadrons (deep inelastic scattering). To properly associate the event with the
neutrino type, we therefore select events with a single Cherenkov ring. The one
exception are so-called "partially contained" events, where a particle exits the central
volume into the outer detector. These are identified as muon neutrinos (with 98%
accuracy), because only muons have such great penetrating power.

Fully contained muons and electrons are identified by a pattern recognition algorithm
that uses the maximum likelihood method to compare the measured distribution of
hits and with the expected shape due to a muon (sharp, collapsed angle if beta < 1)
and an electron (fuzzy due to the electromagnetic shower).
The first piece of evidence for neutrino oscillations is that we measure an anomalous
number of muon neutrino events compared to electron neutrino events. As described
above, the ratio of muon to electron neutrinos is reasonably well predicted, based on
the simple kinematics of pion decay. In our publication:

If the data agreed with the standard prediction of muon and electron neutrino
production, this number should be about 1. However, the measured number is much
less than one.
If neutrinos have no mass, as was once thought, one would expect to observe about the
same number of upward-going and downward-going atmospheric neutrinos. While this is
precisely the case for Super-Kamiokande's electron neutrino data (Figure 3, left) there
is a large deficit of upward-going events observed in the muon neutrino data (Figure 3,
right). At the same time the downward-going events agree with the expectation. Muon
neutrinos that travel long distances before reaching the detector seem to be
disappearing!

By measuring the number of events of each type, as a function of energy and

direction, we can find out if neutrino oscillations are affecting the results. Briefly
speaking: neutrino oscillations can effect the number of neutrinos detected as a
function of distance travelled. The distance travelled is determined
by the arrival angle with respect to the vertical (zenith).

We now know that this disappearance is due to “neutrino oscillations,” a phenomenon in

which massive neutrinos change their type mid-flight. In this case the upward-going muon
neutrinos have oscillated into a third neutrino type, the tau neutrino. This result
indicates that neutrinos have mass. Downward-going muon neutrinos, on the other hand,
interacted inside of Super-K before they had traveled far enough to change types.