Mastodawn

So what makes a neutrino oscillate: forces internal to the neutrino alone, internal forces reacting to external forces, external forces alone, or combinations thereof?
If it's related to mass, some mass-energy must be added from somewhere, or dumped off to somewhere, right?
#neutrino #quantum #physics #NoIDontKnow

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Martin Kimber 2d ago

@dancingtreefrog (I haven’t looked at this for thirty years but) changes of lepton number (eg electron <-> muon) would imply the electroweak force being involved, right? A pure muon neutrino somehow isn’t a pure mass state… it doesn’t exist on its own but as a mix. Field theory is subtle, and looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation reminded me how tantalisingly hard it is. I did a project on the CKM matrix once!

Neutrino oscillation - Wikipedia

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David W. Jones 1d ago

@drmakimber So if it's connected with (basically) each neutrino being actually a mix of the three types, would it be something within the neutrino making the oscillation happen? Is there a mass difference between the different types?

I know neutrinos don't interact with many other particles and fields, so just wondering if there's something they do interact with when traveling that can trigger oscillation.

Complicated things, those little flying dots!

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Martin Kimber 9h ago

@dancingtreefrog yes, the mass difference causes it. This was the evidence of the masses not being zero, even though they are very small. Quantum waves have a frequency related to the particle energy, so the mix has multiple frequencies independently going in and out of phase for the different energies coming from the masses

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David W. Jones 2h ago

@drmakimber So some interaction with the Higgs field that maybe triggers the change? Perhaps a point where quantum gravity would be detectable?