The possible presence of anI=0 axial vector piece in the hadronic neutral current may be detected by looking for an asymmetry in the emission of the recoil deuterons in elastic scattering of neutrinos or antineutrinos on polarized deuterons. It is estimated that this asymmetry could be about 40% with the incident neutrinos in the energy range of tens of MeV.

A new mathematical representation for discussing the state of polarisation of an arbitrary beam of partially polarised light is described which makes use of the generators of the group SU(3). This representation is sufficiently general to describe not only physical photons which are transverse but also virtual photons. The correspondence between our representation and the conventional Stokes parameter representation is established and this leads to an equivalent geometrical description of partially polarised light in terms of diametrically opposite points on a Poincarè sphere with radius equal to the degree of polarisation. The connection with the spherical tensor representation is also discussed and this leads to a simple geometrical interpretation of the bounds on the parameters characterizing an arbitrary beam of partially polarised light.

We study the effect of weak neutral currents in elastic electron deuteron scattering on both unpolarized and polarized deuteron targets. Theoretical expressions have been derived for the polarized electron asymmetry, polarized target asymmetry and recoil deuteron vector polarization within the framework of impulse approximation. We show that these polarization parameters can give vital information on the space-time and isospin structure of the hadronic weak neutral current. In particular, our numerical estimates show that a measurement of polarized target asymmetry is sensitive to the isoscalar axial vector piece in the hadronic neutral current which, though zero in the Weinberg-Salam model, is not completely ruled out by the data.

Some unusual and unexplained events (the so-called Kolar events) were interpreted in $\it{Pramana – J. Phys}$. $\bf{82}$, 609 (2014). This article is a corrigendum to it.

The upcoming 50 kt magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is designed to study the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately over a wide range of energies andpath lengths. The primary focus of this experiment is to explore the Earth matter effects by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range. This study will be crucial toaddress some of the outstanding issues in neutrino oscillation physics, including the fundamental issue of neutrino mass hierarchy. In this document, we present the physics potential of the detector as obtained from realistic detector simulations.We describe the simulation framework, the neutrino interactions in the detector, and the expected responseof the detector to particles traversing it. The ICAL detector can determine the energy and direction of the muons to a high precision, and in addition, its sensitivity to multi-GeV hadrons increases its physics reach substantially. Itscharge identification capability, and hence its ability to distinguish neutrinos from antineutrinos, makes it an efficient detector for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy. In this report, we outline the analyses carried out for the determination of neutrino mass hierarchy and precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters at ICAL, and give the expected physics reach of the detector with 10 years of runtime. We also explore the potential of ICAL for probing new physics scenarios like CPT violation and the presence of magnetic monopoles.