Atmospheric Neutrinos and Proton Decay

Abstract

While there is as-yet no indication of proton decay, lifetime limits have been extended to new extremes prompting the construction of megaton-scale detectors. At the same time, efforts to understand the main background to such searches, atmospheric neutrinos, have yielded a variety of information on their masses, mixings, and even interactions with matter. This presentation discussed recent experimental results as well as expectations for the next generation of detectors in the study of atmospheric neutrinos and the search for proton decay.