66 research outputs found
Theory of Neutrino Flavor Mixing
The depth of our theoretical understanding of neutrino flavor mixing should
match the importance of this phenomenon as a herald of long-awaited empirical
challenges to the standard model of particle physics. After reviewing the
familiar, simplified quantum mechanical model and its flaws, I sketch the
deeper understanding of both vacuum and matter-enhanced flavor mixing that is
found in the framework of scattering theory. While the simplified model gives
the ``correct answer'' for atmospheric, solar, and accelerator/reactor neutrino
phenomena, I argue that a key insight from the deeper picture will simplify the
treatment of neutrino transport in astrophysical environments---supernovae, for
example---in which neutrinos play a dynamically important role.Comment: 18 pages. Written contribution to the proceedings of ``Frontiers of
Contemporary Physics--II,'' held March 5-10, 2001 at Vanderbilt University,
Nashville, Tennesse
Minkowski and Galilei/Newton Fluid Dynamics: A Geometric 3+1 Spacetime Perspective
A kinetic theory of classical particles serves as a unified basis for
developing a geometric spacetime perspective on fluid dynamics capable of
embracing both Minkowski and Galilei/Newton spacetimes. Parallel treatment of
these cases on as common a footing as possible reveals that the particle
four-momentum is better regarded as comprising momentum and \textit{inertia}
rather than momentum and energy; and consequently, that the object now known as
the stress-energy or energy-momentum tensor is more properly understood as a
stress-\textit{inertia} or \textit{inertia}-momentum tensor. In dealing with
both fiducial and comoving frames as fluid dynamics requires, tensor
decompositions in terms of the four-velocities of observers associated with
these frames render use of coordinate-free geometric notation not only fully
viable, but conceptually simplifying. A particle number four-vector,
three-momentum tensor, and kinetic energy four-vector characterize a
simple fluid and satisfy balance equations involving spacetime divergences on
both Minkowski and Galilei/Newton spacetimes. Reduced to a fully form,
these equations yield the familiar conservative formulations of special
relativistic and non-relativistic hydrodynamics as partial differential
equations in inertial coordinates, and in geometric form will provide a useful
conceptual bridge to arbitrary-Lagrange-Euler and general relativistic
formulations.Comment: Belated upload of version accepted by MDPI Fluids. Additional
material in the Introduction; added several tables and an additional appendi
- …