Quantum Mechanics of Neutrino Oscillations - Hand Waving for Pedestrians
| dc.creator | Lipkin, Harry J. | |
| dc.date | 1999-01-25 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T04:06:17Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T04:06:17Z | |
| dc.description | 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 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? | |
| dc.description | 46 pages | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9901399 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9901399 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/48712 | |
| dc.subject | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology | |
| dc.title | Quantum Mechanics of Neutrino Oscillations - Hand Waving for Pedestrians | |
| dc.type | text |