Quantum flavor oscillations extended to the Dirac theory

Abstract

This report deals with the quantum theory of flavor oscillations in vacuum, extended to fermionic particles in the several subtle aspects of the first and second quantization theories. In this scenario, the use of the Dirac equation is required for a satisfactory evolution of fermionic mass-eigenstates since in the standard treatment of oscillations the mass-eigenstates are implicitly assumed to be scalars and, consequently, the spinorial form of neutrino wave functions is not included in the calculations. Within first quantized theories, besides flavor oscillations, chiral oscillations automatically appear when we set the dynamic equations for a fermionic Dirac-type particle. The left-handed chiral nature of created and detected neutrinos can be implemented in the first quantized Dirac theory in presence of mixing; the probability loss due to the changing of initially left-handed neutrinos to the undetected right-handed neutrinos can be obtained in analytic form. In the context of a causal relativistic theory of a free particle, one of the two effects should be present in flavor oscillations: (a) rapid oscillations or (b) initial flavor violation. Concerning second quantized approaches, a simple second quantized treatment exhibits a tiny but inevitable initial flavor violation without the possibility of rapid oscillations. Such effect is a consequence of an intrinsically indefinite but approximately well defined neutrino flavor. The violation effects are shown to be much larger than loop induced lepton flavor violation processes, already present in the standard model in the presence of massive neutrinos with mixing. The conclusions of this report lead to lessons concerning flavor mixing, chiral oscillations, interference between positive and negative frequency components of Dirac equation solutions, and the field formulation of quantum oscillations.

116 pages, 10 figures (The abstract was suppressed due to online title limitations of the abstract field. See the manuscript for obtaining the complete abstract)

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Parity Violation and Chiral Oscillation of Cosmological Relic Neutrinos
• Chiral oscillations in the non-relativistic regime
• Quantum simulation of neutrino oscillations with trapped ions
• Spin-Independent Two-Neutrino Exchange Potential with Mixing and $CP$-Violation
• Extended Grimus-Stockinger theorem and inverse square law violation in quantum field theory
• Covariant asymmetric wave packet for a field-theoretical description of neutrino oscillations
• Maximal correlation between flavor entanglement and oscillation damping due to localization effects
• New CP Phase and Exact Oscillation Probabilities of Dirac Neutrino derived from Relativistic Equation
• Virtual neutrino propagation at short baselines
• CP symmetry and thermal effects on Dirac bi-spinor spin-parity local correlations
• Intrinsic flavor violation in neutrinos produced through decays
• Flavour Condensate and the Dark Sector of the Universe