What do you think? Have you done any research on this?Cato said:Assume just for this question that a neutrino has a mass of 1 ev. That is about the energy of an infrared photon with a wavelength of 1 micron. Is it possible for a visible light photon, or a more energetic photon, to create a neutrino-antineutrino pair?
The photons don't (directly) couple to neutrinos, since the neutrinos are chargeless. So the fast answer is no...Cato said:Is it possible for a visible light photon, or a more energetic photon, to create a neutrino-antineutrino pair
mfb said:It is possible, but as photons do not couple to neutrinos, it has to be an indirect process. It needs to involve the weak interaction and the electromagnetic interaction combined, which makes it ridiculously unlikely.
nah, my reply was wrong... even if it's massless the problem comes from 1->2+3... so even if 2 is massless you can still go to a CoM frame in the final state.nikkkom said:Evidently, it does. Otherwise, no neutrino oscillation.
Assuming a neutrino has mass (something only demonstrated for two mass eigenstates out of three). But even if an eigenstate of neutrino is massless, a photon has no time to decay to a neutrino pair - same reason a graviton has no time to decay into photons.nikkkom said:And it requires a bystander particle to shed some momentum. By itself, photon-to-neutrino-pair process would violate energy and momentum conservation.
snorkack said:Assuming a neutrino has mass (something only demonstrated for two mass eigenstates out of three). But even if an eigenstate of neutrino is massless, a photon has no time to decay to a neutrino pair - same reason a graviton has no time to decay into photons.
Sure, same as "regular" pair production.nikkkom said:And it requires a bystander particle to shed some momentum. By itself, photon-to-neutrino-pair process would violate energy and momentum conservation.
nikkkom said:Evidently, it does. Otherwise, no neutrino oscillation.
that was a reply to a deleted comment from me, in which I said that if the neutrino was massless then the energy-momentum conservation wouldn't be violated (which is obviously a wrong statement from my side).malawi_glenn said:oscillations and production are not the same things.
Neutrinos are created through the process of pair production, which occurs when a high-energy photon interacts with a nucleus and produces an electron-positron pair. The electron and positron then undergo annihilation, producing two neutrinos.
Pair production is a phenomenon in which a high-energy photon converts into a particle-antiparticle pair, such as an electron and positron. This process is governed by Einstein's famous equation, E=mc^2, which states that energy can be converted into mass and vice versa.
Neutrinos are created by pair production because they do not have an electric charge and are therefore not affected by the electromagnetic force. This allows them to be produced in the annihilation of the electron-positron pair, which would not be possible with other charged particles.
The fact that neutrinos are created by pair production is significant because it allows them to be produced in high-energy processes, such as the interactions of cosmic rays with the Earth's atmosphere. This provides scientists with a way to study these elusive particles and learn more about their properties and behavior.
Yes, neutrinos can also be created through other processes such as beta decay, nuclear reactions, and other high-energy particle interactions. However, pair production is one of the most common ways for neutrinos to be created, especially in high-energy environments.