View Single Post

 Quote by DrDu That's not much different from calculation of the total cross section from partial wave amplitudes.
Eh?I don't understand. Can you write an explicit formula for the phase space factor in which a linear combination of two particles with different masses is produced, please (and also the scattering cross section in terms of the invariant amplitude)? Or can you give a reference?
Moreover I think I didn't understand your comparison with the emission of radiation: let me be precise and distinguish mass eigenstates from energy eigenstates: if I have understood your comparison, the role of the observable "energy" in your example is played by "mass" in my interpretation; but the two situations are different, from my point of view. In your case you mean that a superposition of energy eigenstates is possible (and I agree with this), but what I stress is that only mass eigenstates can be produced: notice that a linear superposition of energy eigenstates of photons is still a mass eigenstate. Is it wrong or did I misunderstand your comparison? In this case why?
One more final question, which might be helpful to clarify my point of view: suppose we have the standard model with a right handed neutrino and we add a Yukawa term analogous to that of the quark. After the electroweak symmetry breaking and diagonalization of the mass matrices, what is the difference between quarks and neutrinos? Nobody have doubts that in calulating effective low energy operators from high energy contribution (a very awful expression to indicate all contribution to hadronic state which are deduced by quark interactions, very very very roughly speaking; e.g. the mixing of the k kbar system already cited) mass eigenstates should be used. What is different in the case of neutrinos?