7 research outputs found
A diagrammatic treatment of neutrino oscillations
We present a covariant wave-packet approach to neutrino flavor transitions in
vacuum. The approach is based on the technique of macroscopic Feynman diagrams
describing the lepton number violating processes of production and absorption
of virtual massive neutrinos at the macroscopically separated space-time
regions ("source" and "detector"). Accordingly, the flavor transitions are a
result of interference of the diagrams with neutrinos of different masses in
the intermediate states. The statistically averaged probability of the process
is representable as a multidimensional integral of the product of the factors
which describe the differential flux density of massless neutrinos from the
source, differential cross section of the neutrino interaction with the
detector and a dimensionless factor responsible for the flavor transition. The
conditions are analyzed under which the last factor can be treated as the
flavor transition probability in the usual quantum-mechanical sense.Comment: 27 pages,7 figures, iopart class. Includes minor corrections made in
proofs. References update
Neutrino oscillations and the effect of the finite lifetime of the neutrino source
We consider a neutrino source at rest and discuss a condition for the
existence of neutrino oscillations which derives from the finite lifetime
of the neutrino source particle. This condition is present if the
neutrino source is a free particle such that its wave function is
non-stationary. For a Gaussian wave function and with some simplifying
assumptions, we study the modification of the usual oscillation probability
stemming from . In the present accelerator experiments the effect of
can be neglected. We discuss some experimental situations where the
source lifetime becomes relevant in the oscillation formula.Comment: 13 pages latex file with 2 figure