EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS ON ATMOSPHERIC NEUTRINOS

Atmospheric neutrinos arise from the decay of mesons produced by the i nteractions of high energy cosmic rays with nuclei in the Earth's atmo sphere. Studies of the interactions of these neutrinos are sensitive t o the fundamental properties of neutrinos such as neutrino mass and ne utrino flavour mixing. Because the energies of these neutrinos range f rom less than 1 GeV to more than 10 TeV, and because the distances fro m the production site to the detector range from 10 to 10000 km, the r ange of neutrino mass differences sampled is large and extends to lowe r values than is presently accessible to accelerator experiments. This paper summarizes the status of experimental results on atmospheric ne utrinos and the possible interpretations of these results.