Flavor and chiral oscillations with Dirac wave packets

Journal Article · Fri Apr 01 04:00:00 EST 2005 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.71.076008· OSTI ID:20709022

Bernardini, A E; Leo, S de ^[1]

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1. Department of Cosmic Rays and Chronology, State University of Campinas, PO Box 6165, 13083-970, Campinas, SP (Brazil)

We report about recent results on Dirac wave packets in the treatment of neutrino flavor oscillation where the initial localization of a spinor state implies an interference between positive and negative energy components of mass-eigenstate wave packets. A satisfactory description of fermionic particles requires the use of the Dirac equation as evolution equation for the mass eigenstates. In this context, a new flavor conversion formula can be obtained when the effects of chiral oscillation are taken into account. Our study leads to the conclusion that the fermionic nature of the particles, where chiral oscillations and the interference between positive and negative frequency components of mass-eigenstate wave packets are implicitly assumed, modifies the standard oscillation probability. Nevertheless, for ultrarelativistic particles and sharply peaked momentum distributions, we can analytically demonstrate that these modifications introduce correction factors proportional to m{sub 1,2}{sup 2}/p{sub 0}{sup 2} which are practically undetectable by any experimental analysis.

• OSTI ID: 20709022
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 71; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
CHIRAL SYMMETRY
CHIRALITY
CORRECTIONS
DIRAC EQUATION
DISTRIBUTION
EIGENFUNCTIONS
EIGENSTATES
EIGENVALUES
FLAVOR MODEL
INTERFERENCE
NEUTRINO OSCILLATION
NEUTRINOS
PROBABILITY
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
WAVE PACKETS