Abstract
It is shown that neutrino oscillation processes can be consistently described in the framework of quantum field theory. Namely, the oscillating electron survival probabilities in experiments with neutrino detection by charged-current and neutral-current interactions are calculated in the quantum field-theoretical approach to neutrino oscillations based on a modification of the Feynman propagator. The approach is most similar to the standard Feynman diagram technique in the momentum representation. It is found that the oscillating distance-dependent probabilities of detecting an electron in experiments with neutrino detection by charged-current and neutral-current interactions exactly coincide with the corresponding probabilities calculated in the standard approach.
Highlights
Neutrino oscillation is a well-known and experimentally confirmed phenomenon, which is usually understood as the transition from a neutrino flavor state to another neutrino flavor state depending on the distance traveled [1,2,3]
The generally accepted explanation of this phenomenon is the quantum mechanical description in terms of plane waves based on the notion of neutrino flavor states
We have shown that it is possible to calculate consistently neutrino oscillation processes in a quantum field-theoretical approach within the framework of the Standard Model (SM) minimally extended by the right neutrino singlets using only plane wave states of the particles
Summary
Neutrino oscillation is a well-known and experimentally confirmed phenomenon, which is usually understood as the transition from a neutrino flavor state to another neutrino flavor state depending on the distance traveled [1,2,3]. The generally accepted explanation of this phenomenon is the quantum mechanical description in terms of plane waves based on the notion of neutrino flavor states This standard approach is not perfect: the neutrino flavor states are superpositions of the neutrino mass eigenstates, and for this reason the processes with the flavor states cannot be consistently described within quantum field theory. To describe the localized particles or nuclei, which produce and detect neutrinos, one has to use wave packets, which impede the calculation Later, this approach was developed in [5], where an important theorem was proved that the virtual particles propagating at macroscopic distances are almost on the mass shell. Unlike the approach discussed above, the authors treat the neutrinos to be detected as real particles and make use of wave packets in their reasoning to disentangle the produced neutrino mass eigenstates and to account for energy-momentum conservation.
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