Editing Neutrino (section)

=== Types ===
{| class="wikitable floatright"
|+Neutrinos in the Standard Model of elementary particles
|-
! Fermion
! Symbol
|-
!colspan="2" style="background:#ffdead;"| Generation&nbsp;1
|-
|style="background:#efefef;"| Electron neutrino
|style="text-align:center;"| {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|Electron neutrino}}}}
|-
|style="background:#efefef;"| Electron antineutrino
|style="text-align:center;"| {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|Electron antineutrino}}}}
|-
!colspan="3" style="background:#ffdead;"| Generation&nbsp;2
|-
|style="background:#efefef;"| Muon neutrino
|style="text-align:center;"| {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|Muon neutrino}}}}
|-
|style="background:#efefef;"| Muon antineutrino
|style="text-align:center;"| {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|Muon antineutrino}}}}
|-
!colspan="3" style="background:#ffdead;"| Generation&nbsp;3
|-
|style="background:#efefef;"| Tau neutrino
|style="text-align:center;"| {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|Tau neutrino}}}}
|-
|style="background:#efefef;"| Tau antineutrino
|style="text-align:center;"| {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|Tau antineutrino}}}}
|}

There are three known types (''flavors'') of neutrinos: electron neutrino {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|electron neutrino}}}}, muon neutrino {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|muon neutrino}}}}, and tau neutrino {{math|{{SubatomicParticle|tau neutrino}}}}, named after their partner leptons in the [[Standard Model]] (see table at right). The current best measurement of the number of neutrino types comes from observing the decay of the [[W and Z bosons|Z boson]]. This particle can decay into any light neutrino and its antineutrino, and the more available types of light neutrinos,{{efn|
In this context, "light neutrino" means neutrinos with less than half the mass of the Z&nbsp;boson.
}} the shorter the lifetime of the Z&nbsp;boson. Measurements of the Z lifetime have shown that three light neutrino flavors couple to the Z.<ref name=Nakamura-Petcov-PDG-2016-νmix/> The correspondence between the six [[quark]]s in the Standard Model and the six leptons, among them the three neutrinos, suggests to physicists' intuition that there should be exactly three types of neutrino.