What is Coherent in Neutrino Oscillations the Analog with a Two-Slit Experiment
Abstract
The standard treatment of neutrino oscillations recalls the story of the mathematics lecturer who said "It is obvious that..." then stopped and said; "Is it obvious? ", went out for a half hour, and returned to say; "Yes it is obvious". The textbook neutrino-oscillation wave function, a coherent linear combination of states with different energies, is not found in any real experiments. Its application to reality is obvious. But the interval between "Is it obvious?" and "Yes it is obvious" is filled with many wrong arguments, many wrong papers, and more papers showing that the wrong arguments are wrong. We clarify this issue by describing the passage of a neutrino from source to detector as a multipath experiment where knowing the path destroys coherence, considering the beam and the detector as a correlated quantum system and applying this approach to Bragg scattering by X-rays as well as neutrinos. Amplitudes with the same energy and different masses are detected coherently and produce oscillations. Amplitudes with different energies are incoherent. Quantum mechanics alone shows the existence of a neutrino mass difference to be required to explain the observed Super-Kamiokande data.
- Publication:
-
Neutrino Physics - Its Impact on Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology
- Pub Date:
- April 2001
- DOI:
- 10.1142/9789812811714_0011
- Bibcode:
- 2001neph.conf..115L