Quantum mechanics of neutrino oscillations - hand waving for pedestrians.
Conference
·
OSTI ID:11201
Why Hand Waving? All calculations in books describe oscillations in time. But real experiments don't measure time. Hand waving is used to convert the results of a ''gedanken time experiment'' to the result of a real experiment measuring oscillations in space. Right hand waving gives the right answer; wrong hand waving gives the wrong answer. Many papers use wrong handwaving to get wrong answers. This talk explains how to do it right and also answers the following questions: (1) A neutrino which is a mixture of two mass eigenstates is emitted with muon in the decay of a pion at rest. This is a ''missing mass experiment'' where the muon energy determines the neutrino mass. Why are the two mass states coherent? (2) A neutrino which is a mixture of two mass eigenstates is emitted at time t=0. The two mass eigenstates move with different velocities and arrive at the detector at different times. Why are the two mass states coherent? (3) A neutrino is a mixture of two overlapping wave packets with different masses moving with different velocities. Will the wave packets eventually separate? If yes, when?
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab., IL (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-31109-ENG-38
- OSTI ID:
- 11201
- Report Number(s):
- ANL-HEP-CP-98-126
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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