India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO)

The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) Project is a multi-institutional effort aimed at building a world-class underground laboratory with a rock cover of approx. 1200 m for non-accelerator based high energy and nuclear physics research in India. Neutrino detectors around the world seem to see evidence that these weakly interacting, little-understood particles are not really massless, as was thought so far. Not only do they have non-zero masses, different species (or flavours ) of neutrinos seem to mix and oscillate into one another as they traverse through the cosmos. If this is true, this is not only one of the first pieces of evidence for physics beyond the so-called Standard Model of Particle Physics but would also have great impact on diverse fields such as nuclear and particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. It is thus imperative to study the details of the interactions of these particles. The best option of course is to have a lab in order to do so. In order to maximize the sensitivity to the interactions of these weakly interacting particles, such a neutrino lab is necessarily placed underground.