An Empirical Look at Neutrino Oscillations

Abstract

The data supporting neutrino oscillations are reexamined empirically, ignoring the phase space of the usual theory. An absolutely minimum description can be constructed easily without assuming oscillations. An empirical fit to a simplified but representative set of neutrino problem data may require only two free parameters; the usual oscillation theory requires as many as four. Free parameters used were total mass in range of a propagating neutrino, distance travelled, and a detector profile parameter. The usual oscillation theory appears overcomplicated and inefficient. Even if future data do not demand it be complicated further, it should be abandoned for something better.

v 1.0 includes a corrected LSND data point & readjusted curve fits. The first two figures will be part of a poster session at SLAC SSI-29

References in corpus (9)

• Neutrino Mass Anarchy
• Detection of Accelerator-Produced Neutrinos at a Distance of 250 km
• Neutrino Decay as an Explanation of Atmospheric Neutrino Observations
• Atmospheric neutrino observations and flavor changing interactions
• Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino results
• Probing Unstable Massive Neutrinos with Current Cosmic Microwave Background Observations
• Discriminating between nu_mu <-> nu_tau and nu_mu <-> nu_sterile in atmospheric nu_mu oscillations with the Super-Kamiokande detector
• Asymmetric Collision of Concepts: Why Eigenstates Alone are Not Enough for Neutrino Flavor Oscillations
• Search for Stimulated Neutrino Conversion with an RF Cavity