Abstract
In the Standard Model of particle physics neutrinos are massless. However, in 1998 it was shown beyond doubt that neutrinos possess a non-vanishing rest mass. Neutrinos can transform from one flavour into another one, with a transition probability that changes periodically. These neutrino oscillations are a quantum mechanical interference effect on macroscopic distances, whose basic features and important experiments will be discussed. The precise value of the neutrino mass is a currently unresolved problem, we will discuss the most important approaches to determine it. Neutrinos have the option to be identical with their antiparticles. This would lead to processes that violate lepton number conservation.
Today I have done something which you never should do in theoretical physics. I have explained something which is not understood by something which can never be observed!
Wolfgang Pauli
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Notes
- 1.
The direct detection of this small and low-energy flux was possible only in 2007 by the Borexino experiment [6].
- 2.
The refractive index of heavy water is essentially identical to the one of normal water.
- 3.
The reason lies in the fact that in a medium consisting of electrons, protons and neutrons, electron neutrinos can react through neutral and charged currents, whereas the other flavours only feel neutral currents.
- 4.
One can show that \(P_{\nu _{\mathrm{e}}\rightarrow \nu _{\mathrm{e}}} = P_{\bar{\nu }_{\mathrm{e}}\rightarrow \bar{\nu }_{\mathrm{e}}}\), and analogously for the survival probabilities of muon and tau neutrinos, see Exercise 11.3.
- 5.
A useful analogy exists with the effective 4-fermion description of weak interactions at low energies with the Fermi constant. The presence of the W bosons is indirect, and only apparent at high energies. In the same way the presence of the heavy Majorana neutrinos is felt only indirectly at low energies, namely by the smallness of neutrino masses.
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Povh, B., Rith, K., Scholz, C., Zetsche, F., Rodejohann, W. (2015). Neutrino Oscillations and Neutrino Mass. In: Particles and Nuclei. Graduate Texts in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46321-5_11
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