Quantum mechanics in space-time and neutrino oscillations

by John FIELD (University of Geneva)

Friday 31 Jan 2003, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

If neutrinos are massive, leptonic flavour is not conserved by the weak interaction and the different neutrino mass eigenstates are produced, incoherently, in different physical processes. Dirac and Feynman's path integral formulation of quantum mechanics is applied to several different experiments in optics and atomic physics, as well as to neutrino oscillations following pion decay. In the latter case, an oscillation length 2.68 times smaller than the usual prediction is obtained. This prediction can be tested by comparing measurements of neutrinos produced in either pion or kaon decays in long-linebase neutrino oscillation experiments such as JHF-SK.