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Do axions acquire mass the same way as other particles, through the Higgs mechanism?
Left-handed anti-neutrinosohwilleke said:right handed anti-neutrinos
Oops! Yeah, that was just an unintended goof due to poor proofreading which I've now corrected in my post.Orodruin said:Left-handed anti-neutrinos
There are plenty of right-handed anti-neutrinos around. (Although to be fair, in the field we typically just say ”right-handed neutrinos” with the anti-part impliciy.)
Just adding RHN to the model works though, but let’s not change the subject to neutrino mass generation because that can be discussed for a long long time
What I am saying is that people working with neutrino mass models generally just specify right-handed neutrino and leave the anti-neutrino part implicit. It is also a question of convention of what is called ”anti-neutrino”. Adding additional singlet Weyl fermions to the Standard Model, you add a left and a right handed state per fermion. After that it is a question of lepton number assignment/convention (if any) what you call what.ohwilleke said:But in many contexts it is important to say left handed neutrinos and right handed anti-neutrinos, to avoid confusion, since there are many BSM theories that hypothesize right handed neutrinos and left handed anti-neutrinos.
But, once you choose a convention regarding the lepton number of the electron, the assignment of left handed neutrinos as matter and right handed neutrinos as antimatter is required by physical reality. W bosons decay into electrons and right handed neutrinos, or positrons and left handed neutrinos.Orodruin said:After that it is a question of lepton number assignment/convention (if any) what you call what.
I was referring to the sterile states. Those do not have any lepton number fixed by the choice for the electron as they are singlet states.ohwilleke said:But, once you choose a convention regarding the lepton number of the electron, the assignment of left handed neutrinos as matter and right handed neutrinos as antimatter is required by physical reality. W bosons decay into electrons and right handed neutrinos, or positrons and left handed neutrinos.