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arxiv: hep-ph/9901399 · v1 · submitted 1999-01-25 · ✦ hep-ph

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Quantum Mechanics of Neutrino Oscillations - Hand Waving for Pedestrians

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classification ✦ hep-ph
keywords masshandneutrinowavingdifferenttimewrongeigenstates
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Why Hand Waving? All calculations in books describe oscillations in time. But real experiments don't measure time. Hand waving is used to convert the results of a "gedanken time experiment" to the result of a real experiment measuring oscillations in space. Right hand waving gives the right answer; wrong hand waving gives the wrong answer. Many papers use wrong handwaving to get wrong answers. This talk explains how to do it right and also answers the following questions: 1. A neutrino which is a mixture of two mass eigenstates is emitted with muon in the decay of a pion at rest. This is a a "missing mass experiment" where the muon energy determines the neutrino mass. Why are the two mass states coherent? 2. A neutrino which is a mixture of two mass eigenstates is emitted at time t=0. The two mass eigenstates move with different velocities and arrive at the detector at different times. Why are the two mass states coherent? 3. A neutrino is a mixture of two overlapping wave packets with different masses moving with different velocities. Will the wave packets eventually separate? If yes, when?

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