A Covariant Path Amplitude Description of Flavour Oscillations: The Gribov-Pontecorvo Phase for Neutrino Vacuum Propagation is Right

Abstract

An extended study is performed of geometrical and kinematical assumptions used in calculations of the neutrino oscillation phase. The almost universally employed `equal velocity' assumption, in which all neutrino mass eigenstates are produced at the same time, is shown to underestimate, by a factor of two, the neutrino propagation contribution to the phase. Taking properly into account, in a covariant path amplitude calculation, the incoherent nature of neutrino production as predicted by the Standard Model, results in an important source propagator contribution to the phase. It is argued that the commonly discussed Gaussian `wave packets' have no basis within quantum mechanics and are the result of a confused amalgam of quantum and classical wave concepts.

39 pages, 1 table, 1 figure. Subject matter similar to hep-ph/0110064, hep-ph/0110066. More pedagogical presentation addressing referee criticism of earlier papers

References in corpus (4)

• Direct Evidence for Neutrino Flavor Transformation from Neutral-Current Interactions in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
• Neutrino Wave Packets in Quantum Field Theory
• Towards a unique formula for neutrino oscillations in vacuum
• The Phase of Neutrino Oscillations

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Dirac Spinors and Flavor Oscillations
• Quantum flavor oscillations extended to the Dirac theory
• First quantized approaches to neutrino oscillations and second quantization
• An Analytic Approach to the Wave Packet Formalism in Oscillation Phenomena
• Evolution of coupled classical fields
• Quantum Mechanics in Space--Time: the Feynman Path Amplitude Description of Physical Optics, de Broglie Matter Waves and Quark and Neutrino Flavour Oscillations
• Second-order corrections to neutrino two-flavor oscillation parameters in the wave packet approach
• Theory of Neutrino Oscillations
• Description of diffraction grating experiments for photons and electrons in Feynman's space-time formulation of quantum mechanics: The quantum origins of classical wave theories of light and massive particles
• Spatially Dependent Quantum Interference Effects in the Detection Probability of Charged Leptons Produced in Neutrino Interactions or Weak Decay Processes
• Unitarity triangle test of the extra factor of two in particle oscillation phases